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Quality, reliability and safety are primary concerns in your professional world—and in ours. At SiTEL of MedStar Health, we provide a comprehensive education and training solution to those who work in healthcare. As seasoned professionals, we have many years of experience in the practice and management of medicine and healthcare, respectively. We understand how training impacts performance in hospitals.
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Blog
29
Nov
2010
2010
Kinect: Gesture-Sensitive Sensor System
Posted by Todd Borghesani
Using a gesture-sensitive sensor system for input into immersive environments could have huge implications in the medical training market. Originally, posted on Fast Company, Microsoft’s Kinect is being hacked left, right, and center, with all sorts of exciting uses in its future. But Willow Garage, purveyor of research humanoid robots, has created the best mashup yet: Kinect, a robot, and gesture control.Willow Garage is big on the robotics scene–many of its PR2 robots are helping in research into robotics and man-machine interfaces, and it has a big hand in the Robotic Operating System that’s slowly gaining ground as the operating system of choice among robot developers, from commercial efforts to enthusiast kits. ROS is an open-source enterprise, and that’s proving to be one of its strengths. So it’s fascinating to see how the ROS community, and hardware hacking enthusiasts, are helping Willow Garage with a project to hack a decidedly not open-source system (not matter how Microsoft tries to spin it): Kinect.
What more do we need to say? An advanced gesture-sensitive sensor system, and a robot–combined into one project. The obvious powers of Kinect in enabling direct body-movement control of a robot arm, without requiring expensive and complex strap-on motion-sensing equipment should be clear–it makes telepresence robotic operation look a cinch (is NASA watching, for Robonaut?).
And did you spot that Willow is trying out combining two Kinects together, to 3-D sense the front and back of a person? The observant among you will also be thinking of that particular scene in that Tom Cruise film, and pondering how astonishingly powerful a hacked Kinect motion-control computer interface may be. This looks to be the most exciting Kinect hack yet, which is an impressive fact, but what it does even more is whet our appetite for future hacks to come.
Are there types of medical training that you could envision, where clinicians work together without controllers?
Related articles
Hacking Microsoft’s Kinect (smlxtralarge.com)
Kinect Hack Roundup: Robots, Mario Kart and Boobs (escapistmagazine.com)
Kinect-powered autonomous quadrotor (mt-soft.com.ar)
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Hollie Adejumo
Hollie Adejumo has been a high school intern at the SiTEL Clinical Simulation Center since 2010. Her principal areas of academic interest include chemistry, calculus, and global health. She is interested in providing medical services to the public and serving as a health advocate for underrepresented populations. Hollie hopes that her research will help to reduce unnecessary deaths in the future. She will pursue a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, which will enable her to combine her interests. Proceeding to obtain an MD/PhD will give her the ability to have autonomy in the practice of medicine. This year Ms. Adejumo will be assessing the need for orthopedic simulators, and hopes to begin designing a program for an orthopedic simulator by the end of the year. Outside of school, Hollie participates in a variety of activities. Although she has been a competitive swimmer for most of her life, she also enjoys running cross country and track.
Joyce Donnellan
As the Director of Learning Management, Joyce Donnellan brings over two decades of experience in critical care nursing education and professional development to SiTEL, Medstar’s Simulation and Training Environment Laboratory. She oversees the development and operation of SiTEL’s learning management system. Ms. Donnellan specializes in the development and integration of the learning management systems in complex and decentralized environments. She has extensive experience in education and training, including the development of curricula for both live and e-learning platforms. Ms. Donnellan enjoys collaborating with program directors, educators, and other stakeholders to develop training events and effective curricula. Her research endeavors include studying the impact of online learning on organizational behavior, as well as the integration of educational games into curriculum development. Joyce has presented nationally on e-learning topics, and on innovation in emergency preparedness training. She earned her Master’s of Science in Nursing degree from George Mason University.
Pamela Leonard
Pamela Leonard brings over 15 years of experience in critical care nursing and management to her role as the Director of the SiTEL’s Clinical Simulation Centers. Pam established the first simulation center for MedStar Health and now oversees the operations of several clinical simulation centers in the greater Washington, DC and Baltimore areas. She leads the Clinical Simulation Consulting Services at SiTEL, leveraging best practices pioneered at MedStar to integrate simulation training and education programs into healthcare operations. Pam works closely with Advanced Initiatives in Medical Simulation. AIMS is a coalition of individuals and organizations committed to promoting medical simulation as a way to improve patient safety, reduce medical errors, ensure provider competency, train people to respond to public emergencies and combat situations, and reduce health care costs.
