Robotic surgery has been an important tool in medicine for a number of years, but in dentistry, robots have not yet seen widespread use. One team of biomedical engineering students at South Dakota Mines in South Dakota, USA, is taking the first steps to change this fact. The team has spent the last year working with a local dentist in an effort to build an initial prototype to someday enable remote robotic dentistry.
It all started with Chad Carpenter, a Rapid City dentist who often serves rural and isolated communities in South Dakota. Many of Chad’s patients live where local dentists are few and far between. Chad realised that increasing the ability to do remote dentistry could help increase access to dental care in these underserved communities.
The goal is to create an automated device that can be set up by a hygienist inside a local facility. The device could enable a dentist to remotely oversee the work using the robotic extension, such as filling a cavity.
“We’re trying to automate the drilling of cavities,” says Logan Jundt, a senior biomedical engineering major who will graduate in May. “The end goal is to have a 3D printed filling ready to be inserted into a predetermined cutting pathway.”
The team notes that modern dentistry already employs complex and highly detailed 3D scans of the mouth and all the teeth, so a procedure like a filling could be planned out in the digital realm well in advance of any procedure.
Jillian Linder, a senior biomedical engineering major added, “The dentist could be there for the initial consult, use the scans of the patient, and the robot could automate the process.”
The team also believes this process could save the patient and the dentist time.
Jillian said, “I think the benefit is the filling is already created prior to the drilling because of the predetermined cutting path, so the patient does not have to wait for a filling to be printed. With this, all the planning is done ahead of time under the oversight of the dentist; the final procedure is automated and does not take that long.”
The final vision of this sort of product could benefit both dentists and patients, but team members also recognise that building a dental robot is a daunting task. They hope their prototype is the first of many to come in the years of product development ahead.
“It’s been quite the process, and it’s been really fun exploring this challenge,” says Kara Huse, a senior biomedical engineering major. The team sourced many resources from across campus to build this initial prototype.
The team’s prototype uses custom 3D printed dentistry impression trays to secure the automated device to the mouth. The device includes a dental handpiece with three dimensions of movement to get to the area that needs attention.
Logan said, “This design was kind of inspired off how a 3D printer moves, but this device would be mounted to the mouth.”
Some parts of the device are 3D printed specifically for each patient. This way, they can be disposed of after each procedure to avoid the need to sterilise all parts of the device between each use. Jillian explained, “A future team could also explore utilising a self-stabilizing arm to drill cavities.”
The team recognises that part of the challenge here is the stigma around both dentists and robots.
“It's kind of a scary concept for some people, but people are becoming more accustomed to robotics over time,” said Logan. The team believes that as robots become more accepted, it’s possible they could someday be more trusted than humans for procedures like this.