Team at Speck design under Tark Abed had a chance to completely re-design Accuray Cyber Knife M6 surgical laser robot. It was based on a KUKA robotic arm platform. This is a high precision, multi functional device with almost infinite amount of kinematic positions. I was a design consultant working on this projects as well as many others.
Quantitative and qualitative research was done by ID, UXR and Engineering teams to establish design direction. During this research phase we evaluated the competitive landscape and tested human perception of what customers would consider to be safe and approachable robots. We concluded that similar products in this space are INDUSTRIAL and MECHANICAL but not APPROACHABLE and RELATABLE. Patients did not feel at ease due to the architecture and form factor.
MECHANICAL - INDUSTRIAL - TOUGH
CLEAN - CAPABLE - FUNCTIONAL
HUMAN LIKE - ORGANIC - RELATABLE
To validate our design, we worked closely with the engineering team to first create concept proposals and table top physical models that we can actually rotate in space and flush out all kinematic challenges. Once we gained confidence in feasibility, team created a full scale and functional robotic arm .
In order to get final approval and kick off production tooling, we created a 1:1 “golden sample” This model had limited functionality but fully represented design intent.
