Dental Robotics: CAD/CAM in Dentistry

Friday, October 28, 2011
Hall 1-2 (San Jose Convention Center)
Ariel Anders , Computer Engineering, University of California Santa Cruz, Bionics Lab, santa cruz, CA
Jacob Rosen, PhD , Computer Engineering, University of California Santa Cruz, Bionics Lab, santa cruz, CA
Computer-Aided Design and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) technology is an important developing field in dentistry.  These specialized CAD/CAM computer programs are used prior to surgery to determine implant placement and create customized dental prosthesis for various dental restoration procedures.   The inaccuracies in the current non-automated methods for dental implants may lead to dental implant failure due to improper positioning of the implant.   Our objective is to develop an autonomous robotic arm that completes the dental implant placement and crowning preparation procedures with higher accuracy than the current manual methods.  For dental crowning, a digital replica of the tooth is made using a 3D digitizer (Microscribe MX) and imported into CAD software (Solidworks). Milling trajectories are created using the virtual tooth and populated with evenly distributed via points. For dental implants, the process is similar; however, the milling trajectory is a straight path perpendicular to the surface of the jaw.   The coordinates from the trajectories are exported using Perl scripts and executed by the robotic arm using CAM software (WincapsIII).  Using this workflow the robotic arm autonomously milled a boundary around a tooth for crowning and milled the jaw for implant placement on static plastic dental models.   Further developments will account for a patient's movement in a process called "dynamic registration."  A passive robotic arm will be used to collect real-time data of the position of the jaw.  The robotic arm will execute the procedure while using the real time feedback from the passive arm to insure accurate implant placement.