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[EN] This work proposes an initiative to introduce and promote the use of screencasts as a supporting tool for learning basic concepts of automatic control in technical University Degrees. The contents developed are available in the Youtube canal named “Automatica”, grouped by conceptual blocks. This material has been shared with the students of the University of Malaga through the Virtual Campus of 13 subjects given by the Department of Systems Engineering and Automation during the academic courses 2017/2018 and 2018/2019. The results derived from opinion surveys taken by the students show the good acceptance of this type of material. On the other hand, the cross-referring data between the effective reproduction time and the students’ qualifications in knowledge tests designed ad-hoc reveal a direct relation between the time employed by the students watching the screencasts and an improvement in their academic performance., [ES] En este trabajo se presenta una iniciativa encaminada a introducir y fomentar el uso de los videotutoriales como herramienta de apoyo para el aprendizaje de los conceptos básicos del control automático en titulaciones universitarias técnicas. Los contenidos desarrollados, disponibles en el canal de YouTube denominado “Automática”, se han agrupado de acuerdo a los principales bloques conceptuales de la materia y han sido puestos a disposición del alumnado en el espacio del campus virtual de la Universidad de Málaga (UMA) asociado a 13 asignaturas impartidas por el Dpto. de Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automática de la UMA en los cursos académicos 2017/2018 y 2018/2019. Los resultados obtenidos a través de encuestas de opinión cumplimentadas por los estudiantes muestran la buena acogida de los mismos. Por otro lado, el cruce de los datos de uso (entendido como tiempo efectivo de reproducción) recogidos durante este periodo y las calificaciones obtenidas a través de pruebas de conocimiento diseñadas ad-hoc revelan la existencia de una relación entre el empleo del material desarrollado y la mejora del rendimiento académico de los estudiantes., Este trabajo ha sido financiado a través del Plan de Innovación Educativa de la Universidad de Málaga (convocatoria 2017/2019) bajo la referencia PIE17-090.

In recent years, single-port access surgery has been on the cutting edge of robotic research. This technique entails the insertion of several instruments with articulated distal tips through a common multiport trocar. When these instruments are handled by external manipulators, a kinematic constraint arises because all the movements have to be performed while taking into account the insertion point, which must be known. A variety of techniques has been used to identify this point using multiaxial force–torque sensors placed on the robot end effector. However, because this kind of sensor provides information regarding exerted forces throughout the instrument, it is difficult to separate abdominal and internal soft tissue interaction forces. Therefore, the aim of this work was to develop a navigation method to teleoperate two manipulators that handle surgical instruments for single-port access surgery. The method can move both instruments inside the abdominal cavity, taking into consideration the insertion point. This point is estimated using the measured force and torque throughout the instruments. To avoid estimation error due to the interaction of instruments with soft tissue inside the abdomen, hidden Markov models have been used to encode the surgeon's gestures and detect the interaction. Finally, a set of experiments has been carried out to validate the proposed method.

The main difficulty in laparoscopic or robot-assisted surgery is the narrow visual field, restricted by the endoscope's access port. This restriction is coupled with the difficulty of handling the instruments, which is due not only to the access port but also to the loss of depth of field and perspective due to the lack of natural lighting. In this article, we describe a global vision system and report on our initial experience in a porcine model.The global vision system consists of a series of intraabdominal devices, which increase the visual field and help recover perspective through the simulation of natural shadows. These devices are a series of high-definition cameras and LED lights, which are inserted and fixed to the wall using magnets. The system's efficacy was assessed in a varicocelectomy and nephrectomy.The various intraabdominal cameras offer a greater number of intuitive points of view of the surgical field compared with the conventional telescope and appear to provide a similar view as that in open surgery. Areas previously inaccessible to the standard telescope can now be reached. The additional light sources create shadows that increase the perspective of the surgical field.This system appears to increase the possibilities for laparoscopic or robot-assisted surgery because it offers an instant view of almost the entire abdomen, enabling more complex procedures, which currently require an open pathway.