Tooth arrangement for the manufacture of a complete denture using a robot

The successful application of robots in surgery and other medical fields pr ompts us that robots can also play an important role in oral restoration. T he traditional way of complete denture manufacturing is manual and only hig h-level dentists and skilled technicians can do this work well. But we beli eve that a robot can do this work better and more easily. Artificial teeth are very complicated in shape, and not easy to be grasped and manipulated a ccurately by a robot gripper. Aiming at improving our previous robot manufa cturing system of complete dentures, we present a new method to perform tee th implanting. We improve the previous manufacturing procedure by adding se veral components in the operating process. By this method, the robot grippe r only needs to grasp and implant intermediate blocks, which have very simp le shapes and are easy to handle precisely. The 3D human-machine tooth arra ngement software performs the calculation of intermediate blocks' positions and orientations. We perform the experiment of tooth arrangement for a pat ient, and obtain a pair of ideal tooth arches. A complete denture can be ma nufactured according to this result.