DEIB - Events

Early steps towards robotic autonomy

Paolo Fiorini
Full Professor of Computer Science, University of Verona

DEIB - BIO1 Room (building 21, first floor)
May 16th, 2018
3.15 pm

Contacts:
Elena De Momi

Research Line:
Technologies for diagnosis, therapy and rehabilitation

Abstract

Currently, robotic autonomy is the subject of much discussion and it is instilling fears and much misunderstanding in the general public, even among people with basic scientific and technological competences. Fortunately, in most application areas we are far away from the level of autonomy shown in movies and TV shows, however in some field, e.g. medicine and transportation, some initial automatic and autonomous actions are being demonstrated.
In this talk, I will overview some of the recent advances in automation for surgery, and indicate the main steps necessary to achieve autonomous behavior. I will describe the projects currently carried out in ALTAIR, the robotics laboratory of the University of Verona, to develop autonomous action of surgical robots.

Short Bio

Paolo Fiorini, received the Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Padova, (Italy), the MSEE from the University of California at Irvine (USA), and the Ph.D. in ME from UCLA (USA). From 1985 to 2000, he was with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, where he worked on autonomous and teleoperated systems for space experiments and exploration. In 2001 he returned to Italy to the School of Science of the University of Verona (Italy) where he is a Full Professor of Computer Science. His research focuses on teleoperation for surgery, space, service and exploration robotics, with particular emphasis on the theoretical and practical problems of high safety applications, such as space and surgical robots. In 2001 he founded the ALTAIR robotics laboratory, which has been awarded several EU and Italian grants, in particular on robotic surgery, such as Accurobas, Safros, Isur, and Eurosurge. In 2009, he founded the company Surgica Robotica for the development of a new generation of surgical robots. He is an IEEE Fellow (2009) and in 2017 he received the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Research Grant to carry out research on autonomous robotic surgery.