My first exposure to surgical robotics was in a biomedical robotics course during my masters degree. We researched the da Vinci surgical system and visited an operating room to test one out. I sat at the surgeon console in awe at how effortlessly I could manipulate the tiny objects on the operating table. I was hooked, and wanted to apply my robotics knowledge to develop the next generation of these systems.
I built up my relevant skills, contacted robotics groups at the company, and ultimately spent the summer of 2018 as a Robotics Controls Engineering intern at Intuitive Surgical. I am a co-inventor on a patent (under review) based on that work, and have included a general description of my research below.
The control of the da Vinci surgical robot relies on precise system
parameters. If these values are not initialized correctly, controlling the instruments feels uncoordinated to the surgeon. Designs for future surgical systems require new approaches to estimate these parameters. My work involved innovating, testing, and integrating new methods for identifying these values for next gen systems. The project culminated in a successful demonstration of the new method on a system prototype, an hour-long presentation of the theory behind the method to the robotics controls engineers, and a patent submission.