Page 48 - Demo

Chapter 346GnathologySeven out of nine included articles concerning gnathology originated from Japan. All articles were categorized into basic research, except for one recent article describing commercially available technology [72]. Four articles published between 1999 and 2003 looked at a mouth opening-and-closing rehabilitation robot [73-76]. A masterslave system was developed, called Waseda Yamanashi (WY). The goal of this robot was to facilitate mouth opening training. Limited experiments were performed. Four articles looked at robotic articulators to reproduce jaw movements either with or without the use of jaw movement tracking devices [72, 77-79]. An experiment on a single patient’s working cast was performed for the fabrication of a full veneer crown using a robotic articulator [77]. The most recent paper in this group describes a case study of a commercially available robot, called the ‘Bionic Jaw Motion’ (Bionic Technology, Vercelli, Italy) to reproduce mandibular kinematics with a combination of a movement analyzer (high-speed camera) and a robot articulator [72]. A validation of the technique is, to the authors best of knowledge, not reported. Finally, a Japanese article published in 2018 described the development of a motorized robotic denture for healthy elderly people to assist with chewing and swallowing [80]. Experiments were performed in a laboratory setting. Education of studentsAll six articles concerning the education of students originate from Japan and were published between 2006 and 2018. Technological readiness levels in this category were relatively high and subjects for these performed studies were mostly human. Although most papers fell into the observational epidemiological research category, study design was mostly limited to unvalidated questionnaires with dental students or their trainers regarding their subjective perception of usefulness as results. In two articles, a humanoid (human-like) robot was developed for dental training purposes [81, 82]. It came with different ‘effects’ such as performing hand movement, tongue movements, saliva production, effusion of bleeding, pain-sensors for drilling with too much force, and voice recognition. The robot was used to practice dental restorations. A questionnaire was completed by trainers and trainees showing their satisfaction with the system. Recent research showed a more extensive version of a humanoid training robot which was developed by members of the same group together with a commercial robot manufacturer (Tmusk Co., Ltd. Fukuoka, Japan) [83]. This robot is capable of moving its head, to have a conversation with students, perform unexpected (but intended) movements, create vomiting reflexes and produce saliva. The same Tom van Riet.indd 46 26-10-2023 11:59