RTI Helps DLR MIRO Lab See the Future of Remote Operation on a Beating Heart

Minimally Invasive Robotics Surgery System Uses RTI Connext DDS to 'Feel' Surgical Instruments through a Robotic Tele-presence

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—Jan. 14, 2014—Real-Time Innovations (RTI), the real-time infrastructure software company, today announced that MIRO Lab, an advanced robotic assistance research laboratory at the Robotics and Mechatronics Center (RMC) within the German Aerospace Center (DLR), is leveraging the RTI Data Distribution Service (DDS) middleware solution to support minimally invasive robotics surgery (MIRS). RTI Connext™ DDS is used to connect the surgeon to multiple remote operating instruments, view moving objects with a stabilized camera and, most importantly, enable a haptic feedback loop that connects the surgeon's touch – the most important of surgeons' skills – to remote surgical instruments. This new technique provides surgeons with a wealth of possibilities, including minimally invasive, open-heart surgery.

Connext DDS delivers high performance, distributed communications software for MIRO Lab's mission-critical, decoupled systems architecture. Connext DDS provides the communications infrastructure to facilitate coordination between the DLR MIRO robots, the endoscope, the surgeon's robot controllers and the user interfaces.

"Connext DDS is the perfect tool because it enables us to create our vision of a versatile robotic surgery system for research," said Stefan Jörg, research engineer of robotics and mechatronics center at DLR. "Its simple, data-centric architecture delivers a wonderful high-performance research platform with an extreme degree of flexibility and adaptability."

Robotics surgery is a demanding application, which requires very high performance over a distributed system architecture, while allowing researchers to try different ideas and options during their limited time with surgeons testing the facility. The highly de-coupled data-centric nature of the Connext DDS software infrastructure made this simple to achieve for the researchers.

RTI drove creation of the DDS standard and has been the definitive market leader since its adoption. First with support for both the DDS Application Programming Interface (API) and DDS-RTPS wire interoperability protocol, Connext DDS is proven in hundreds of unique product designs.

Stan Schneider, CEO of RTI commented, "Since our inception, RTI has worked to stay ahead of the curve by delivering real-time infrastructure software to support mission-critical distributed systems. MIRO Lab's MIRS system is far beyond current minimally invasive surgery technology and we are honored to play a role in the development of advanced research for medical surgery."

To find out more information about RTI and the world's leading implementation of DDS software and services, please visit: https://www.rti.com/products/connext-dds-professional

About RTI

RTI is the real-time distributed infrastructure software company. Our messaging forms the core nervous system for the most demanding real-time applications in the Internet of Things. With RTI Connext™, devices seamlessly share information and work together as one integrated system.

RTI applications span air, sea, land and space defense; medical imaging, emergency response and hospital integration; power control and energy management; avionics, unmanned systems and air-traffic control; financial and asset trading; and automotive testing and safety.

RTI is committed to open standards, open community source and open architecture. RTI provides the leading implementation of the Object Management Group (OMG) Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard.

RTI is the world's largest embedded middleware provider. RTI is privately held and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.