Program

Cécile Huet

European Commission support to smart robots for healthcare: achievements and future perspective

The plenary lecture will cover a number of activities supported in the past, in particular through the Horizon 2020 funding programme, and will give some insights about the preparation of upcoming funding programmes, namely Horizon Europe (Research and innovation), and the digital Europe Programme (capacity building and deployment). It will also include some broader perspective on the relevant AI policy developments.

Cécile Huet is Deputy Head of the Unit "Robotics and Artificial Intelligence" at the European Commission. This unit funds and assists beneficial robotics and AI developments within Europe. The unit is in charge of one of the world's largest civilian programme in robotics with a budget of €700 million EU funding from Horizon 2020, supplemented by €2.1 billion from the European robotics industry in the context of the Robotics Public-Private Partnership. The unit is coordinating the preparation of the AI activities in the next funding programmes, Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programmes. Currently the unit is working with the stakeholders on the next Partnership on AI, data and Robotics, defining the strategic research, development, innovation and deployment for Europe in these fields. Moreover, this unit is at the heart of the Communication on Artificial Intelligence for Europe, the Coordinated Plan on Artificial Intelligence and the Communication on Building Trust in Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence.

Cécile joined the unit since its creation in 2004. Previously, she worked for the industry in signal processing after a post-doc at the University of California Santa Barbara and a PhD at University of Nice Sophia Antipolis.

In 2015, she has been selected as one of the "25 women in robotics you need to know about".

Daniela Rus

Robots, AI, Pandemics, and Surgery

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the role of AI and robotics in healthcare. There are tremendous opportunities to support the medical profession with intelligent tools to better diagnose, monitor, treat, and prevent disease. I will describe our recent work on robotic emergency ventilation systems for patients and UVC disinfecting robots, and discuss future opportunities for incision-free surgeries enabled by miniaturized robotic pills.

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Allison Okamura

Advancing Human Sensorimotor Control for Surgery

Robot-assisted surgery has a significant learning curve, because the human operators must adapt to kinematic mappings between human and robot, the dynamics of the manipulator and instruments, limited or altered sensory feedback, and learn the task itself. While performance metrics exist to certify users, it is generally unknown how to optimize training to speed up the learning and maximize the amount learned in skilled tasks. In this talk, I will demonstrate learning in novice and expert robot-assisted surgeons, discuss the mechanisms and roles of visual and haptic training, and propose methods for maximizing learning of complex instruments and tasks. Teleoperated robots enable visual and haptic perturbations, as well as detailed behavioral recordings, that facilitate the study of learning for a number of real-world skilled tasks not usually addressed in the neuroscience literature – ranging from surgery to driving a car.

Allison M. Okamura received the BS degree from the University of California at Berkeley and the MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University, all in mechanical engineering. She is currently Professor in the mechanical engineering department at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in computer science. She is an IEEE Fellow and Editor-in-Chief of the journal IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. Her awards include the 2020 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Technical Achievement Award, 2019 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Distinguished Service Award, and 2016 Duca Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. Her academic interests include haptics, teleoperation, virtual environments and simulators, medical robotics, neuromechanics and rehabilitation, and soft robotics. She is passionate about engineering education and diversifying STEM. Outside academia, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two children, running, and playing ice hockey. For more information about her research, please see the Collaborative Haptics and Robotics in Medicine (CHARM) Laboratory website: http://charm.stanford.edu.

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Blake Hannaford

Introducing Automation to Surgical Robotics: Challenges and Frontiers

With great success of teleoperated surgery in the medical profession, the research field is now working to demonstrate the utility of selectively introducing automated assistance for surgical robotics. Concepts from AI which readily translate into surgical robotics (though not necessarily in medical use) include computer vision, 3D shape recovery, augmented reality registration, and advances in control systems and networked teleoperation. Other concepts such as classical planners may not fit as well when a highly skilled human is still in the loop.  Highly elongated, narrow, and lightweight structures of robotic surgical instruments are fundamentally limited in accuracy and precision - limitations that can surprise the engineer since human controllers so readily adapt. This talk will review some results from the lab on the determinants of precise positioning of robotic surgical instruments, as well as some ideas on possible AI frameworks needed to advance patient outcomes through selective automation.

Blake Hannaford received the B.S. degree in Engineering and Applied Science from Yale University in 1977, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1986 to 1989 he worked on the remote control of robot manipulators in the Man-Machine Systems Group in the Automated Systems Section of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech and supervised that group from 1988 to 1989. Since September 1989, he has been at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He was awarded the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Early Career Achievement Award from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, and was named IEEE Fellow in 2005.  He was at Google-X / Google Life Sciences / Verily from April 2014 to December 2015. His currently active interests include  surgical robotics, surgical skill modeling, and haptic interfaces.