Development of a Multimodal Geometry-Aware 6-DoF Robotic Arm for Safe Closed-Loop Cold Plasma Wound Dosimetry

Overview

Chronic wounds affect ~40 million individuals annually, and often persist in a prolonged inflammatory phase greatly delaying tissue regeneration while increasing the risk of infection and morbidity. Existing treatments including surgical debridement, moisture-balancing dressings, and topical antimicrobial treatments are often invasive, resource-intensive, and show limited effectiveness in severe cases. Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma jets have emerged as a promising non-invasive modality, producing reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS) that enhance angiogenesis and tissue regeneration. Therapeutic outcomes, however, are highly dependent on exposure duration, scanning velocity, and standoff distance. These parameters are difficult to maintain consistently during manual operation, which leads to dose heterogeneity and safety concerns. This work presents an automated six-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) robotic platform for controlled DBD plasma wound surface scanning. The platform combines a geometry-aware multimodal sensor head with an active-feedback dosimetry framework. The arm incorporates high-torque closed-loop actuators (up to 15 Nm) supporting a 1.5 kg end-effector, with 3D-printed PETG structural links and electromagnetically-shielded cabling for plasma enviornments. The sensing module combines an Intel RealSense D415 depth camera for real-time point-cloud wound reconstruction, an MLX90640 thermal array for tissue safety (≤ 40 °C), and an IR-sensor for perfusion metrics. Custom software generates rasterized G-code toolpaths for uniform plasma delivery across non-planar geometries. Validation demonstrates sub-millimeter positioning accuracy (mean error: 0.027 mm, max: 0.069 mm) with a 100% pass rate. The platform is intended as a research instrument to accelerate standardization, safety validation, and eventual clinical adoption of intelligent, non-invasive plasma-based wound therapies.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Applied Mechanics (Senior Division) · Entry S-02-09

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Engineering projects
• CSEF Engineering projects
• Every CSEF 2026 project