Sensing, Situational Awareness Augmentation and Assistive Control for Surgical Continuum and Soft Robots

Abstract: Emerging surgical paradigms such as natural orifice surgery and minimally invasive surgery in deep surgical sites present new challenges to surgeons and engineers. These new challenges stem from the limitations of surgeon’s sensing, perception, and incomplete situational awareness. The talk will discuss modeling, challenges and applications of continuum and soft robots for addressing these challenges in several domains of surgery. These robots range from continuum robots with force sensing and contact detection capabilities to elastomeric electrode arrays capable of traversing anatomical passageways in the inner ear. Within the context of these surgical applications, we will focus on our efforts in modeling, designing, and controlling intelligent surgical robots capable of sensing the environment and using the sensed information for task execution assistance and for situational awareness augmentation. Sample motivating applications in the areas of minimally invasive surgery of the upper airways, cochlear implant surgery, trans-urethral resection of bladder tumors, and OCT- guided retinal micro-surgery will be used to elucidate the potential of these robots.

Bio: Nabil Simaan (Ph.D, 2002 Technion, Israel) is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science and Otolaryngology at Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN. He has served as an Editor for IEEE ICRA, associate editor for IEEE TRO, Associate Editor for ASME JMR, and editorial board member for

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For more information on Zoom link and password, please contact Lisa Spicer at lms8@psu.edu