In this episode, Marwa Mohammed Alaa Eldean Eldiwiny interviews Yong-Lae Park, Associate Professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, about the bio-inspired design and manufacture of soft robots and microrobots for healthcare. Park’s research goal is to analyze the design and dynamics of biological systems and transform them into robotic/mechatronic systems for human life. Some of the his projects include development of artificial skin sensors, soft Muscle Actuators, and wearable robots for human rehabilitation.

In this episode, Abate interviews Peter Harris from HighRes Biosolutions about automation in the field of drug discovery. At HighRes Biosolutions they are developing modular robotic systems that work alongside scientists to automate laboratory tasks. Because the requirements of each biomedical research laboratory are so varied, the robotic systems are specifically tailored to meet the requirements of each lab.

In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Ayanna Howard, Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, about her work to help children with the movement disorder cerebral palsy. Howard discusses how robots and tablet can be used to “gamify” pediatric therapy. The idea is that if therapy is fun and engaging children are more likely to do it, and thus, they are more likely to see the long-term benefits of the therapy. Howard discusses how therapy is “gamified,” how a small humanoid robot is used to coach children, and how they work with pediatricians.

A robotic doctor that can be controlled hundreds of kilometres away by a human counterpart is gearing up for action. Getting a check-up from a robot may sound like something from a sci-fi film, but scientists are closing in on this real-life scenario and have already tested a prototype.

Laparoscopy is a surgical technique in which a fiber-optic camera is inserted into a patient’s abdominal cavity to provide a video feed that guides the surgeon through a minimally invasive procedure. Laparoscopic surgeries can take hours, and the video generated by the camera — the laparoscope — is often recorded. Those recordings contain a wealth of information that could be useful for training both medical providers and computer systems that would aid with surgery, but because reviewing them is so time consuming, they mostly sit idle.

From bustling cities to tiny farming communities, the bright lights of the local stadium are common beacons to the Friday night ritual of high school football. But across the sprawling stretches of rural America, these stadiums are commonly far from doctors who could quickly diagnose and treat head injuries that have brought so much scrutiny to the sport. But by using a remote-controlled robot, a neurologist sitting hundreds of miles from the field can evaluate athletes for concussion with the same accuracy as on-site physicians.

Computer scientist Regina Barzilay is working with MIT students and medical doctors in an ambitious bid to revolutionize cancer care. She is relying on a tool largely unrecognized in the oncology world but deeply familiar to hers: machine learning.

New technique uses biomaterials to make complex devices that could be used for many implantable applications, including drug delivery and stents, and could lead to advances in precision medicine

In this episode, Christina Brester interviews Vladimir Stanovov, PhD student and researcher at the Siberian State Aerospace University (Krasnoyarsk, Russia). Stanovov speaks about a speech-controlled wheelchair, which seeks to provide people that are quadriplegic, that is people with partial or total loss of use of their limbs and torso, with the possibility to control their wheelchairs through voice commands. In this interview Stanovov discusses the basic parts of the speech-controlled wheelchair, the fuzzy controller he created, and the trials they had in the medical center.

Siao Tin Soh gives the low-down on the emerging demand in China for cutting edge, medical robotics, and the up-and-coming Chinese companies looking to compete in the market.

Telemedicine is a rapidly growing field and, with the aid of telepresence robots, is quickly gaining traction in hospitals and homes around the world.

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-17

In this guest lecture, Hiroshi Yokoi from University of Electro-Communication, Chofu, Japan, talks about prosthetic robot hands, EMG devices, bio-feedback, and the Japanese trends in Brain-Machine Interfaces.

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-17

In this guest lecture, Wenwei Yu from Chiba University, Japan, introduces his approach to assistive technology and talks about (simulation) experiments in human walking and reflexive responses.