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Dr. Ren, together with Godwin, was invited to give a talk at IEEE IMBioC (International Microwave Biomedical Conference) 2022, on Kirigami Strain Sensors Using Conductive Trace and Radio Frequency Estimation for Robotics. Related webpages: http://www.nusri.cn/IMBioC2022/ 

Dr. Ren was invited to give 2 talks at 2021 ISMR (International Symposium on Medical Robotics) workshops

Talk 1: “Flexible Endoluminal Robotics with Minimal Invasiveness and Exposure” for workshop on “Model-based Design, Sensing, and Control of Continuum
Manipulators and Robotic Flexible Instruments“

Talk 2: “Multidimensional Sensing and Perception for Dexterous Medical Robotics” for workshop on “Sensing and Feedback in Dexterous Medical/Surgical Robotics” respectively:

Related webpages: http://www.ismr.gatech.edu/workshop-program

Dr. Ren was invited to give a keynote speech at the 2021 ICRA (International Conference on Robotics and Automation) RoPat workshop on ‘Robot-Assisted Systems for Medical Training’
Related webpage:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/morph-lab/events/ropat21-icra-workshop/

Surgical motion generation and motion understanding towards augmented minimally invasive robotic procedures, Dr. Hongliang Ren

• Abstract:

  Minimally Invasive Surgeries emerging in modern medical treatment have brought new opportunities and challenges for procedure-specific surgical motion generation and the associated motion understanding, which are the foundation of intelligent robotic manipulation and guiding interventions. Image-guided robotic surgery is expected to increase the precision, flexibility, and repeatability of surgical procedures but poses challenges for medical training.
  This talk will highlight some recent developments in dexterous robotic motion generation with motion understanding towards image-guided minimally invasive procedures. The procedure-specific telerobotic surgical systems can assist surgeons in performing dexterous manipulations using the master-slave console bilateral motion generation & mapping mechanism with variable stiffness.
  Meanwhile, surgical motion understanding aims to learn from the multi-domain surgical perceptions and describe the semantic relationship between instruments and surgical region of interest. Automatically understanding the instrument motions in robotic surgery is crucial to enhance surgical outcomes, enable surgical camera automation, and facilitate surgical training. To that end, we generate the task-aware saliency maps and scanpath of the instruments beyond tracking and segmentation, similar to the surgeon’s visual perception, to get the priority focus on selected surgical instruments. Furthermore, generating a surgical report in robot-assisted surgery, together with surgical scene understanding, can play a significant role in document entry tasks, surgical training, and post-operative analysis.

• Workshop video material (available at the workshop webpage): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPSOs_ie-ZQ 

Dr. Ren was invited to talk at 2021 ICEE workshop on Safeguarding Public Health During Infectious Disease Pandemics Using Medical Robotics, Wearable Technology, and AI. 
Related webpages:
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/2021-icee-workshop

Pilot Study of Trans-oral Robotics to Meet the Minimal Exposure Needs During Infectious Disease Pandemics, Dr. Hongliang Ren

• Abstract: Swabbing tests have proved to be an effective method of diagnosis for a wide range of diseases. There are high risks of infection for surgeons during the face-to-face COVID-19 swab sampling due to the novel coronavirus’s infectivity. Teleoperated or self-administered swabs can mitigate potential occupational health hazards and reliance on healthcare workers during traditional swabbing procedures. We present some pilot studies on flexible transoral robotic approaches and mechanisms for swab sampling. One prospective robot comprises a flexible manipulator, an endoscope with a monitor, and a master device. A 3-prismatic-universal flexible parallel mechanism with 3 degrees of freedom (DOF) is used to realize the manipulator’s movements. The flexibility of the manipulator improves the safety of testees. Under the vision guidance from the endoscope, a master device can control the swab’s motion attached to the manipulator for sampling. We will also discuss other possible methods to apply closed kinematic chain theory to develop a self-administered viral swab to collect respiratory specimens. The proposed sensorized swab models utilizing hollow polypropylene tubes possess mechanical compliance, simple construction, and inexpensive components. These foldable telescopic structures with multiple kirigami cuts minimize components involved in the system as the characteristics are built directly into the material.

• Reading material: Paper 1, Paper 2, Paper 3