Can the Sunram 7 robot be controlled using a 6-D space mouse?
Sunram 7 is an MR-safe robotic system for breast biopsy, operated by 3-D printed pneumatic stepper motors. We have two active setups in the lab for demonstrations and research.
Currently, the robots can be manually controlled using 1-D sliders or 2-D joysticks, but this is not very intuitive. Several students made more advanced human-machine interfaces using e.g. haptic control, optical tracking, augmented reality etc., but these take significant time to set up (booting a computer, connecting the right equipment, launching the right scripts etc). So there is a strong desire to add a new control device which is better than sliders/joysticks, but also very easy to start (as in: flip one switch, wait two seconds and it just works).
We have an unused 3D Connexion wired space mouse which can be used as a permanently attached input device. Some silicon brains are also needed, which could be a high-end Arduino (e.g. Teensy 4.1) or a Raspberry Pi or, well, by the time you read this you already have a few ideas, right?!