13/10/2016
The day of 14th September turned out to be a day of enlightenment for the students of the MIT E&TC Department in the field of medical electronics as Dr. Pietro Valdastri conducted an interesting seminar over the topic of “Lifesaving Capsule Robots”. This seminar was organized by the MIT IEEE Student Branch with the co-operation of IEEE Communications Society and the MIT E&TC Department.
Dr. Pietro Valdastri is the founder of the Science and Technologies of Robotics in Medicine (STORM) Lab, a research lab focusing on medical capsule robots for gastro-intestinal endoscopy and abdominal surgery. He is the Chair of Robotics and Autonomous systems in Leeds with a primary appointment in the school of electronic and electrical engineering and a secondary appointment in the school of mechanical engineering. In Leeds, he continues to direct the STORM lab and is actively involved in the Surgical Technologies Research Group.
Students and the faculty members of the E&TC Department were present for the seminar. The Head of the E&TC Department, Prof. Dr. G. N. Mulay, felicitated the guest speakers.
The talk moved from capsule robots towards a new generation of surgical robots and devices, having a relevant reduction in invasiveness as the main driver for innovation. In the first part of the talk, Dr. Valdastri discussed enabling technologies that have potential to transform colonoscopy and endoscopy. These technologies included magnetic manipulation of capsule endoscopes, water jet propulsion, real time pose tracking, and inter-magnetic force measurement. The second part of the talk gave an overview about the development of a novel robotic solutions for single incision robotic surgery. In particular, a novel surgical robotic platform based on local magnetic actuation. The final part of the talk introduced an open source component based design environment for capsule robots that aims at facilitating researchers in the field in exploring novel concepts and reducing the time in achieving a functional prototype.
The students present for the seminar were deeply engrossed during the talks. They came up with questions and doubts of their own which the doctor answered aptly. The students pleased to have an expert from the field talk about the innovation and opportunities present. Even the faculty members present came up with some doubts. The talk was inspiring and informative at the same time. It was an eye-opener for many who were interested in the field of robotics and especially in the field of medical robotics.