In this section

Soft Robotics and Applied Control

Soft and flexible robotic systems for affordable healthcare.

Head of Group

B414B Bessemer Building
South Kensington Campus

What we do

Our research investigates fundamental aspects of control of soft and flexible robots for surgery. These include harnessing the intrinsic compliance of soft robots, rejecting disturbances that characterise the surgical environment, and complying with stringent safety requirements. Our ambition is to provide affordable robotic solutions for a range of surgical applications, including endoscopy, percutaneous intervention, and multi-handed surgery.

Why it is important?

Robotics for healthcare is one of the fastest growing segments in the global robotics market. However, conventional surgical robots are unaffordable in low-resource settings. Harnessing the potential of soft and flexible robots can contribute to making surgery safter, more accurate, and more accessible in low-middle income countries. These are pressing needs due to the aging population, and to the growing workforce crisis in the healthcare market.

How can it benefit patients?

Our work aims to improve accuracy, reduce the risk of injury, and reduce discomfort in percutaneous interventions such as biopsy, in diagnostic and interventional endoscopy, and in multi-handed surgery.

Dr Enrico Franco
Lecturer

Citation

BibTex format

@inproceedings{Virdyawan:2023:10.1109/ICRAE56463.2022.10056197,
author = {Virdyawan, V and Ayatullah, T and Sugiharto, A and Franco, E and Garriga, Casanovas A and Mahyuddin, AI and Rodriguez, y Baena F and Indrawanto},
doi = {10.1109/ICRAE56463.2022.10056197},
publisher = {IEEE},
title = {Design and manufacturing of an affordable soft robotic manipulator for minimally invasive  diagnosis},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICRAE56463.2022.10056197},
year = {2023}
}

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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Soft robotic manipulators are inherently compliant thus they are ideally suited for minimally invasive diagnosis and intervention. In addition, soft robotics allows for affordable manufacturing, thus it could be adopted in low and middle-income countries where conventional robotics is prohibitively expensive. In this work, the design, manufacturing, and actuation strategy of an affordable soft robotic manipulator is presented. The manufacturing process does not rely on sophisticated technologies, and the pneumatic actuation does not require digital pressure regulators. Instead, a low-cost solution consisting of a needle valve operated by a servo motor is employed. The prototype is assessed with experiments that demonstrate its functionality.
AU  - Virdyawan,V
AU  - Ayatullah,T
AU  - Sugiharto,A
AU  - Franco,E
AU  - Garriga,Casanovas A
AU  - Mahyuddin,AI
AU  - Rodriguez,y Baena F
AU  - Indrawanto
DO  - 10.1109/ICRAE56463.2022.10056197
PB  - IEEE
PY  - 2023///
TI  - Design and manufacturing of an affordable soft robotic manipulator for minimally invasive  diagnosis
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICRAE56463.2022.10056197
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/102443
ER  -