Abstract: A robotic system for remote operation of human-controllable equipment includes a remotely operable robotic subsystem configured to be at least one of mounted on or arranged adjacent to the human-controllable equipment to be controlled, and a remote controller that is configured to be operated by a human. The remote controller emulates a control representation of the human-controllable equipment such that a human can provide commands using the control representation. The remotely operable robotic subsystem is configured to receive commands from the remote controller to thereby operate the human-controllable equipment.

Abstract: A robotic surgical system includes a multiple degree of freedom manipulator arm having a surgical tool. The arm is coupled to a controller for controllably positioning the surgical tool within a three dimensional coordinate system. The system further includes a safety monitoring processor for determining the position of the surgical tool in the three dimensional coordinate system relative to a volumetric model. The volumetric model may be represented as a constructive solid geometry (CSG) tree data structure. The system further includes an optical tracking camera system disposed for imaging a region of space that includes at least a portion of the manipulator arm. An output of the camera system is coupled to the processor that processes the volumetric model for determining if the surgical tool is positioned outside of the volumetric model. The system further includes a strain gage for detecting slippage in three dimensions between an immobilized tissue, such as bone, and a reference point.