Multiscale Medical Robotic Systems for Advanced Healthcare

Advances in biology and medicine require enabling technologies for manipulation and characterization of tissues, single cells, and even sub-cellular structures. The past decade has witnessed a significant progress in the area of micro-robotics for biomedical applications such as single cell manipulation and minimally invasive surgery. In robotic manipulation at small scales, two long-lasting technical challenges existed: (1) how to search and locate ultra-small and fragile end-effector tips and (2) how to determine the third dimensional information (i.e. Z positions) under microscopy and other medical imaging modalities.
This talk will introduce a new search and detection method for automatically locating end-effector tips; and vision-based contact detection algorithms for determining the relative Z distance between the end-effectors and target manipulation objects. This talk will present microrobotic systems integrating these techniques as well as visual servo controls for high-throughput microinjection of cardiomyocytes in cardiovascular drug testing and for automated cryopreservation of oocytes and embryos in IVF clinics. Future research directions including AR-assisted surgery and personalized healthcare will also be discussed.