LCSR Seminar: Hongliang Ren “Collaborative Robotics with Continuum and Compliance”
Abstract:
Representing a major paradigm shift from open surgery, minimally invasive surgery (MIS) assisted by robots and sensing is emerging by accessing the surgical targets via either keyholes or natural orifices. It is challenging to get delicate and safe manipulations due to the constraints imposed by the mode of robotic access, confined workspace, complicated surgical environments and the limited available technologies, particularly in terms of endoluminal curvilinear targeting and guidance. Addressing the aforementioned challenges and aiming at human-centered flexible robots, this talk will share our recent biorobotic researches in continuum mechanisms, compliance modulations, delicate sensing, collaborative human-robot interactions, mostly in the context of medical applications. The compliant continuum robotics with embodied intelligence allows us to bypass critical important intracranial or intracorporeal structures, to conform its shape to be compliant with curvy passages, and have direct access to the target sites under proper planning and navigation, thus significantly reducing invasiveness and trauma of surgery.
Bio:
Hongliang Ren is currently an assistant professor and leading a research group on medical mechatronics in the Biomedical Engineering Department of National University of Singapore (NUS). He is an affiliated Principal Investigator for the Singapore Institute of Neurotechnology (SINAPSE), NUS (Suzhou) Research Institute, and Advanced Robotics Center at National University of Singapore (NUS). Dr. Ren received his Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering (Specialized in Biomedical Engineering) from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in 2008. Prior to joining NUS, he was a Research Fellow at The Johns Hopkins University, Children’s Hospital Boston & Harvard Medical School, and Children’s National Medical Center, USA. His main areas of interest include Biorobotics & Intelligent Control, Medical Mechatronics, Computer-Integrated Surgery, and Multisensor Data Fusion in Surgical Robotics. Dr. Ren is IEEE Senior Member and currently serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Automation Science & Engineering (T-ASE) and Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing (MBEC). He is the recipient of NUS Young Investigator Award, IAMBE Early Career Award 2018 & Interstellar Early Career Investigator Award 2018.
