Continuum and Soft Robots for medical interventions

Abstract:

In recent decades, the development of MIS (Minimal Invasive Surgeries) and NOTES (Natural Orifices Transluminal Endoscopic Surgeries) has been accompanied by a proliferation of innovative medical robot designs, especially based on incorporating continuum and soft design elements. However, researchers have not yet reached consensus on do not have broadly agreed methods for design, modeling, and simulation of soft and continuum robot structures bodies. In addition, the challenges of sensing, actuation, and control in soft and continuum bodied robots are still being overcome

The objective of this workshop is for participants to review and discuss the most recent advances in terms of novel design and mechanism paradigms. Modeling approaches, stability, and control the stability issue, and the control strategy, which are intimately linked, will be covered, as well as open challenges like follow-the-leader deployment, variable stiffness mechanism, variable stiffness control, reconfigurable structure, data-driven approach for robot control, and advance in the development of materials.

List of speakers (all confirmed):

Allison Okamura, Professor, Stanford University, Stanford

Arianna Menciassi, Professor, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa 

Christian Duriez, Director of research INRIA, Lille 

Christos Bergeles, Associate Professor, King’s College London, London

Elliot Wright Hawkes, Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara 

Hongliang Ren, Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Jamie Paik, Assistant Professor, EPFL, Lausanne 

Kaspar Althoefer, Professor, Queen Mary University of London, London

Pierre Dupont, Professor, Harvard Medical School, Boston

Pierre Lambert, Associate Professor, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles


Organizers:

Jessica Burgner-Kahrs, Associate Professor, Leibniz Universität Hannover

Matteo Cianchetti, Assistant Professor, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna 

Caleb Rucker, Assistant Professor, University of Tennessee

Kanty Rabenorosoa, Associate Professor, University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté

 

 List of topics:

  • Continuum robots
  • Soft material robots
  • Actuated needles, catheters, and flexible instruments
  • Modeling large and nonlinear deformation
  • Follow-the-leader deployment
  • Variable stiffness mechanisms
  • Sensors fusion based closed-loop control
  • Reconfigurable and deployable mechanisms

Poster Teasers & Poster interactive sessions:

We invite extended abstracts of 2 pages in the standard format for IEEE conference. Authors of accepted abstracts are expected to attend the workshop with 3 mins teaser presentation and to present their work as posters during the interactive session with posters prepared in advance.