Automation seeks to improve the reliability and quality of processes. This study aims to automate high dose rate brachytherapy (HDR-BT), a radiation therapy that places radioactive sources at the site of the tumor using needles. Although HDR-BT has a high rate of clinical success in curing prostate cancer, it also has several side effects related to needle and dose trauma. A new planning algorithm from previous work optimizes needle arrangements using skew-lines (nonparallel, non-intersecting

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... nes). This paper presents initial experiments towards an automated system for implanting skewline needle arrangements computed from a planning system. We describe the interface, calibration and integration of the robotic hardware with the planning system, and present experiments using our robotic system to implant needles into anatomicallycorrect tissue phantoms. Results suggest that this system can achieve HDR-BT treatment objectives with reduced trauma to organs and low demands on operator skill, thus making the procedure more reliable and repeatable. In the future, we believe that robotic HDR-BT will improve overall treatment quality with reduced dependence on physician skill.