Centre for Surgical Robotics

Advances in surgery have made a significant impact on the management of major acute diseases. Earlier diagnosis, improved efficiency and delivery of therapeutic interventions combined with advances in surgical techniques with an emphasis on the quality of functional outcomes have become increasingly important. Surgical robotics has evolved over the last 30 years from a highly specialised research field to an ever-expanding area of innovation and development internationally, spearheading evolution in precision medicine. Access to increasingly small and remote anatomies, characterisation of cellular and molecular information in situ, in vivo and performing targeted therapy with increased precision are major drivers for future generations of surgical robots. The aim of the Centre is to champion the development of the emerging 5th-generation surgical robots and address the disconnect between early detection of small precursor lesions and the need for precision intervention by harnessing information at molecular, celluar, organ and system levels and pushing the frontiers of precision surgery.

Research Interests

Continuum robots for endoluminal intervention

Multi-port, single-port and trans-orifice robotic surgery

Micro-nano robotics for micro-surgery, targeted therapy and drug delivery

MR-compatible robots for surgery and intervention

Bioinspired and soft robotics for surgery

Ergonomics and smart surgical instruments

 

Centre for Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotics

With demographic shift associated with the ageing population, there is a growing demand on rehabilitation and assistive robots for managing both cognitive and physical declines. Rehabilitation robotics includes therapy robots for cognitive/ physical therapies and assistive robots for augmenting physical and social interaction. Every year, millions of people worldwide suffer from stroke, and for those surviving, many are left disabled. Physical independence is closely coupled with dignity and social inclusion, and the potential for developing new technologies in this area is limitless. Rehabilitation robotics also plays an important role in managing sports injuries, post-surgical recovery, and chronic sensorimotor deficits.

Research Interests

Wearable robotics and soft exoskeletons

Human-robot interaction

Upper/lower limb rehabilitation robotics

Social robotics for rehabilitation

Smart prostheses and implants

Hospital/home patient transfer and assistive robots

 

Centre for Hospital Automation and High Throughput Robotics

The use of robots for streamlining routine patient care tasks (e.g. managing pharmacy, hospital logistics, supplies, inventory, cleaning and disinfection), reducing the physical demand on human workers, ensuring high-throughput laboratory/point-of-care tests, and maintaining more efficient operational processes is becoming a major trend in modern hospitals. During the COVID-19 pandemic, robots were deployed for a much wider range of tasks to help reduce exposure to pathogens, ensuring a safe environment for both patients and health workers. They are used for clinical care, public safety, laboratory and supply chain automation, out-of-hospital care, quality of life, and continuity of work and education. The major research effort of the Centre ranges from service robots for hospital automation to new robotic platforms used for high throughput screening and in vitro diagnostics, as well as those used in single-cell transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, supporting the drive towards building the hospitals of the future and personalised medicine.

Research Interests

Field robotics for hospital logistics, disinfection, pharma and lab automation

Smart capsules for patient transport and intelligent ICUs

Robotics for high throughput proteomics, metabolomics and single-cell omics

Robotics for high throughput screening and in vitro diagnostics

Remote presence robots

Robotics for managing infectious diseases

 

Centre for Micro-nano Systems

Micro-nano robotics involves the design and fabrication of robots in micro-nano scales (e.g. from molecular machines to micro-swimmers), as well as manipulation of micro-nano scaled objects and fabrication with micro-nano accuracy. With recent emphases clinically on improved surveillance and earlier diagnosis, an increasing proportion of procedures performed will aim to target smaller lesions that are more amenable to minimally invasive procedures. The development of cell-based therapy and single-cell omics has also called for the development of miniaturised robots for surgery and targeted therapy with micro-nano instruments and smart actuators with integrated sensing and imaging, supported by advances in materials, micro-nano fabrication and micro-nano machining. The Centre covers basic science research related to sensing, power, communication, navigation, manipulation, locomotion, and onboard computation of micro-nano robotics. The research issues addressed by the Centre include, for example, the development of biodegradable and non-cytotoxic microrobots, the development of autonomous devices capable of self-directed targeting, catheter(e.g. fibrebot) based delivery of microrobots near the target, tracking and control of swarms of micro-nanodevices in vivo, and the pursuit of clinically relevant therapies.

Research Interests

Multi-material micro-nano fabrication (e.g. with two-photon polymerization and femtosecond lasers)

Nano-tweezers for biomolecules and cell manipulation and characterisation

Micro-nano scale self-assembly and robot swarms

Micro-nano engineering for organs-on-chip

Bioinspired and biohybrid micro-nano robotics

Targeted drug delivery and new theranostics with micro-nano robotics

 

Centre for Perception, Cognition and Behavioural Science

Empowering robots with human intelligence represents one of the ultimate goals of robotic research. However, robotics and AI have often underestimated the difficulty of replicating perceptual and cognitive capabilities that humans find particularly easy. Perception and cognition are essential components of both teleoperated and autonomous robots, enabling attention-based control, reactive behaviour, situation awareness and seamless human-robot interaction. By leveraging the latest advances in computational and experimental neuroscience, our Centre focuses on both fundamental understanding of brain function and practical applications of these findings for human-robot symbiosis. These include the research of perceptual docking for knowledge acquisition in robotics by using in situ learning of operator-specific motor and perceptual and cognitive behaviour; perceptual/cognitive augmentation by extending an individual’s innate abilities and restoring functions that are lost due to diseases such as neurodegenerative diseases and cognitive impairment; intent, emotion, behaviour recognition and user modelling for human robot interaction; and the development of social robotics for managing children’s mental health and care for the elderly.

Research Interests

Multi-material micro-nano fabrication (e.g. with two-photon polymerization and femtosecond lasers)

Nano-tweezers for biomolecules and cell manipulation and characterisation

Micro-nano scale self-assembly and robot swarms

Micro-nano engineering for organs-on-chip

Bioinspired and biohybrid micro-nano robotics

Targeted drug delivery and new theranostics with micro-nano robotics

 

Centre for Smart and Composite Materials

Gears, motors, and electromechanical actuators are ubiquitous in existing robotic platforms. However, new materials that combine sensing, actuation and computation are challenging the physical limitations of traditional mechatronic systems and offer a range of opportunities for the design of new robots, especially with design principles inspired from nature. The development of multi-material 3D printing further facilitates the fabrication of structures with smart composite materials that can evolve or react to external stimuli in a pre-programmed manner. The intrinsic nonlinearities of these structures can be leveraged to perform a complex motion that is difficult to achieve by conventional means and is suitable for systems that require small active elements biocompatibility and, in some cases, self-healing capabilities. The main research goal of the Centre is to explore new materials and fabrication schemes for robotics addressing allied energy harvesting, sensing, structural design, assembly and system integration issues. The Centre is to focus on developing radically new design approaches and novel materials that are multi-functional, power-efficient compliant and biointegrable for applications in surgery rehabilitation drug delivery and implants.

Research Interests

Multi-phase composites and metamaterials for robotics

Self-powered materials with integrated sensing

Active and shape memory materials

Intelligent, self-healing and learning materials

Bioinspired smart fibres and fibrebots

Composite materials with embedded actuation, sensing, communication and computation

 

Centre for Biophotonics

The need for in situ, in vivo tissue characterisation for precision surgery has given rise to the need of integrating biophotonics techniques with robotics. A growing family of optical techniques can be used to analyse tissue and body fluid characteristics in situ at both macroscopic and microscopic scales. These include white light; time- or wavelength-resolved endogenous/exogenous fluorescence; spectral or hyperspectral reflectance imaging; polarisation-resolved detection; Brillouin and Raman scattering; harmonic generation and photoacoustics. The vision of the Centre is to carry out forward-looking basic research and technological innovation of biophotonics for medical robotics. Our research includes, for example, developing spectroscopic measurements (e.g., endoscopic Raman spectroscopy) and imaging techniques (e.g., endoscopic Terahertz imaging) with miniature fibrescopes to enhance contrast in biological tissues, particularly utilising tissue autofluorescence, absorption and scattering properties to provide label-free readouts, as well as providing local environmental information on tissue metabolic state and identifying cancerous tissue and mapping tumour margins. Our research is also directed towards multi-modal, multi-scale imaging integration and robot-assisted operation, combining structure with function for real-time in situ, in vivo measurement for micro-surgery, targeted cell therapies, implantation of tissue nanoconstructs, and precision theranostics in general.

Research Interests

Micro- and Nano-optoelectronic devices for biomedical applications

Terahertz imaging and sensing

Endoscopic photoacoustic imaging

Surface/Nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Optical liquid biopsy

MR-compatible bio-photonic probes

Fibrebot endomicroscopy

 

Centre for Bioelectronics and Brain Computer Interface

The emergence of smart implants and implantable robotics demands the development of new, ultra-low power micro-electronic devices combined with biohybrid and bioinspired concepts that translate fundamental biological principles into engineering design rules or integrate living components into synthetic structures to create robots that perform like natural systems. The vision of the Centre is to harness new material and sensing technologies with abiotic/biotic interfaces combined with biohybrid and bioinspired designs for long-term/transient implants and wearable robotics, supporting applications including continuous in situ, in vivo monitoring of tissue viability, quantitative assessment of therapeutic outcomes, and closed-loop control actuation and functional stimulation. Key research issues addressed by our team include, for example, the development of active sensing paradigms with resource-efficient on-node processing incorporating self-calibration and closed-loop compensation and on-chip, multisensory integration; investigation of effective power delivery, wireless data path, quality of service and device security for secure clinical deployment; ultra-low power ASIC and microelectronics incorporating ultra-thin area efficient SoC; power delivery/harvesting and bioinspired QoS; heterogeneous, anisotropic, hierarchical, multifunctional materials; additive manufacturing with actuator-embed-ding: reliable tissue interfacing and sampling: stable, reagentless operation and readout; sensor and probe packaging; as well as optics/device miniaturisation and real-time signal/spectral analysis under resource constraints.

Research Interests

Ultra-low power ASICs and neuromorphic computing

Soft microelectronics with abiotic/biotic interfaces

Bioprinting and soft lithography

Biohybrid and bioinspired actuators

Bio-MEMS and smart implants

Human organs-on-chips

 

Centre for Robotic Vision and Image Guidance

Path planning, obstacle avoidance, localization, and environment mapping are essential requirements of robot navigation and exploration. For micro-scale intervention and targeted therapy, disorientation due to limited microscopic field-of-view and challenges in targeting and retargeting are major hurdles to overcome. Advances in sensing, machine vision, and embedded computation have underpinned the remarkable progress of surgical robots delivering targeted therapy while negotiating complex, delicate an atomical structures. Our Centre is focussed on the fundamental theory and practical applications of robot vision and image guidance for robots used in surgery, rehabilitation and hospital automation. Areas of research include, for example, real-time SLAM and dynamic view expansion, 3D deformation recovery, probabilistic soft-tissue tracking, manifold embedding for intraluminal navigation, as well as dynamic active constraints and augmented reality visualisation. The research goal is to maximise the information content by fusing imaging/sensing with navigation to provide context aware navigation guidance, human-robot cooperative control, and in situ learning and adaption.

Research Interests

Multisource unsupervised domain adaptation

Robot vision with active vision and local-global mapping

Deep learning analytics and semantic scene/image association

Multiscale visual servoing and retargeting

Surgical GPS and augmented reality

XAl incorporating deep learning for robot navigation

 

Centre for Precision Mechatronics and Microfabrication

New materials and fabrication schemes promise a new generation of robots that are power-efficient, multifunctional, compliant, and autonomous. Precision fabrication and mechatronic embodiment are essential for translating these advances to new designs of macro and micro-robots for clinical use. The Centre is a part of the National Major Scientific and Technological Infrastructure of Translational Medicine (Shanghai) to provide comprehensive precision manufacturing and rapid compliance testing services for medical robotics and translational research. It provides services such as multi-axis CNC machining of special-shaped precise components involved in robotics across scales, micro-scale laser cutting and welding of precision planar and curved parts, and 3D printing of metal and a diverse range of non-metal materials. In addition to precision mechatronics and microfabrication research, the Centre also provides services for precision processing and manufacturing process inspection. It can conduct verification and testing of electrical safety regulations, high frequency, electromagnetic compatibility and endoscopic image testing for national standards and industrial standards including GB 9706.1, GB 9706.4, GB14710, Y 0505,Y 0068.1, and provide rapid verification of common components of medical robotic devices, such as cable and package durability.

Research Interests

Multi-material additive manufacturing

Micro-, meso-, and macroscale fabricate architectures

Compliant structures with laser patterning

MEMS/MOEMS and microfluidics for robotics

Thermally drawn multi-material fibres

Precision mechatronics for surgical robotics