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Robotic technologies are becoming pervasive in healthcare, with a lot of advanced platforms preclinically or clinically employed and providing a great benefit for both patients and the entire healthcare system. Robots for minimally invasive surgery, robots for radiation therapy delivery, robots for steering catheters and miniature devices in the human body are already a reality and pose interesting challenges to clinicians and engineers in terms of controllability, safety and navigation.
In addition to robotic instrumentation used in acute setting for interventional applications and minimally invasive surgery, robots can be also used for chronic monitoring and therapy inside the human body. Implantable and ingestible in vivo robots are emerging as leading alternatives for continuous therapy, and are featured by additional challenges, in terms of biocompatibility, safety, communication and powering.
Starting from the speaker research experience, this talk illustrates the challenges for development and clinical translations of robots operating in acute and chronic setting.
Professor Arianna Menciassi (Fellow, IEEE) received the M.Sc. degree in physics from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in 1995, and the Ph.D. degree in bioengineering from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Pisa, Italy, in 1999. She is currently a Professor of bioengineering and biomedical robotics with SSSA, where she is the Team Leader of Surgical Robotics & Allied Technologies within The BioRobotics Institute. She served as Coordinator of the Ph.D. in BioRobotics in the period Feb. 2019-Feb. 2025, and in April 2019 she was appointed as the Vice-Rector of the SSSA for 6 years. Her research interests include surgical robotics, microrobotics for biomedical applications, biomechatronic artificial organs, and smart and soft solutions for biomedical devices.
She pays special attention to the combination of traditional robotics, targeted therapy, and wireless solutions for therapy (e.g., ultrasound- and magnetic-based solutions). Professor Menciassi is a Senior Editor for the IEEE Transactions of Robotics, co-Editor of APL Bioengineering and she is an Associate Editor for Soft Robotics. She received the Well-tech Award (Milan, Italy) for her research on endoscopic capsules, and she was awarded by the Tuscany Region with the Gonfalone D’Argento, in 2007, as one of the best 10 young talents of the region. In 2020, she has been awarded with the KUKA Innovation Award, for her activities on robotic assisted focused ultrasound. Her Google Scholar citation over 34,000 with a H-index of 92.
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