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Paediatric congenital esophageal atresia surgery typically requires delicate and dexterous operations in a narrow and confined workspace. This study aims to develop a novel robot assisted surgical system to address these challenges.

The proposed surgical robot consists of two symmetrical slave arms with nine degree of freedoms each. Each slave arm uses a rigid-dexterous configuration and consists of a coarse positioning manipulator and a distal fine operation manipulator. A small Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) mechanism was designed to form the main component of the coarse positioning unit, ensuring to endure large forces along the vertical direction and meet the operational demands. The fine positioning manipulator applied the novel design using flexible shafts and universal joints to achieve delicate operations while possessing a high rigidity. The corresponding kinematics has been derived and then was validated by a co-simulation that was performed based on the combined use of Adams and MATLAB with considering the real robot mass information. Experimental evaluations for the tip positioning accuracy and the ring transfer tasks have been performed.

The simulation was performed to verify the correctness of the derived inverse kinematics and demonstrated the robot’s flexibility. The experimental results illustrated that the end-effector can achieve a positioning accuracy within 1.5 mm in a confined 30 × 30 × 30 mm workspace. The ring transfer task demonstrated that the surgical robot is capable of providing a solution for dexterous tissue intervention in a narrow workspace for paediatric surgery.

A novel and compact surgical assist robot is developed to support delicate operations by using the dexterous slave arm. The slave arm consists of a SCARA mechanism to avoid experiencing overload in the vertical direction and a tool manipulator driven by flexible shafts and universal joints to provide high dexterity for operating in a narrow workspace.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the emergence of a new form of internship (virtual or e-internships), which poses particular challenges for the interns, the supervisors and organizations alike. The authors present results regarding the prevalence and characteristics of e-internships, including a brief e-internship description for demonstrative purposes. Then use the findings of a student survey to outline the role of students’ past internship experience and prior knowledge as potential factors that influence acceptance of e-internships.

The case study was based on an interview with an e-intern and the analysis of student awareness, prior experience and knowledge was based on the analysis of a student survey.

The paper summarizes preliminary research that confirms the emergence of e-internships in several countries. It also outlines the characteristics of these new internships and outlines how e-internships compare to traditional internships, thus providing an insight for practitioners and managers. The case study and student survey outline the role of previous internships and prior knowledge as potential influences on self-selection and interest in e-internships. The paper further discusses some of the practical issues.

This paper outlines a number of new findings about the e-internships and represents only a first step into the right direction. The success factors and conditions for these internships are currently largely unknown.

This paper provides information about e-internships using available statistics, a case study and survey results. The paper outlines relevant research avenues for researchers in the area of virtual work and personnel management, e-collaboration, communication studies and multimedia effectiveness.