Seminar on Robotics in Healthcare: From Rigid to Soft Machines for Advanced Surgical Systems, Haptic Interfaces, Assistive Devices, and Artificial Organs

14 Sep 2023 02.00 PM - 03.00 PM LT6 (NS2-02-05) Current Students, Public

Dr Thanh Nho Do

Scientia Senior Lecturer 

Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering (GSBmE), UNSW Sydney, Australia

This seminar will be chaired by Prof Louis Phee, Vice President (Innovation & Entrepreneurship) and Dean of the College of Engineering.

Please click here to register your attendance.

Seminar Abstract

Gastrointestinal tract and the accessory organs of digestion are responsible for human death from cancer than any other systems in the human body. Cardiovascular diseases including stroke are becoming increasingly prevalent with population aging. Heart failure is the inability of the heart to pump sufficient blood to the body, leading to significant morbidity and mortality. People with partial or full loss of motor function have difficulties to perform basic activities of daily living. Existing robotic systems and treatment methods for these diseases are unable to meet the complex requirements for conducting successful interventions in clinical challenging settings, due to limitations in size, rigidity, payload, flexibility, sensing components, and haptic feedback, all of which constrain their potential.  Haptic or touch feedback plays a vital role in enhancing the human performances and safety in skilled tasks, especially in teleoperated surgical systems. Despite advances, current hand-worn instruments that can reproduce the human hand’s motion and amplify human sense of touch are still limited. Soft machines have emerged as potential candidates that can transform the way human safely interacts with intelligent machines and provide a new mean of approach to create biomimetic robotic systems that can effectively treat deadly diseases in complex networks of tubular organs. In this talk, Dr. Do will introduce new design and fabrication approaches that are employed to create advanced soft robotic machines at different scale and size, including a new class of smart textiles, bio-inspired soft robots, soft exoskeletons, flexible microcatheters, all-in-one surgical system for in-situ 3D bioprinting and endoscopic surgery, advanced haptic interface, and artificial robotic organs. Finally, he will discuss the future challenges in these research areas and propose solutions that can further enhance their practicality in healthcare sector.

Speaker’s Biography​

Dr Thanh Nho Do is currently a Scientia Senior Lecturer at Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering (GSBmE), UNSW Sydney, Australia where he currently leads the UNSW Medical Robotics Lab (www.medicalrobotics-lab.com). He received PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering (Surgical Robotics) under the supervision of Prof. Louis Phee from the School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.  He was a postdoctoral scholar at California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), UC Santa Barbara (UCSB), USA. He also worked as a Research Fellow at the school of MAE, NTU, Singapore. In 2018, Dr Do joined UNSW Sydney under the UNSW Scientia Program, one of the cornerstones of UNSW’s 2025 Strategy, aiming to attract and retain exceptional researchers with outstanding research track records. Dr Do has received several awards such as 2022 Google Research Scholar Award, the Best of Advanced Materials Technologies 2020, Top 100 in Engineering Scientific Reports 2023, 2023 UNSW Goldstar Award 2023, NSW CRN Professional Development Award 2022, Arc PGC Outstanding Supervisor Award 2021, and many others. He is currently inventor of 10 patents with several being licensed/commercialised. Dr Do is the only Australian Roboticist who was featured 5 times by Engineers Australia, 2 times by Reuters, 3 times by IEEE Spectrum, 3 times by American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) since 2020. He has contributed to attract ~AUD$27M in research fundings as lead and/or co-investigator. His main research interests include the development of flexible surgical systems, soft robotics, wearable haptics, heart assistive device, artificial robotic organs, soft exoskeletons, smart textiles, and nonlinear modelling and control. His works have also attracted substantial media coverages locally and internationally.

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