A team of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Italy, led by Prof. Arianna Menciassi, won the prestigious International KUKA Innovation Award 2020 for the development of an innovative platform for focused ultrasound surgery.
As Prof. Menciassi said, the platform is able to increase accuracy, speed, and therapeutic opportunities. The Da Vinci Research Kit (DVRK) platform that Prof. Menciassi’s team used to compete for the Kuka Award is the same that SSSA is offering within the TERRINet Trans-National Access (TNA) framework. Find more information here.
The DVRK was also used by dr. Irene Rivas Blanco (University of Malaga, Spain) during her TNA at The BioRobotics Institute of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy.
Irene carried out a brilliant experiment aiming at building a large dataset of robotic surgical manoeuvrers for collaborative surgical robotics by exploring the use of Deep Learning techniques to perform autonomous auxiliary tasks in laparoscopy.
Another TERRINet TNA user, Dr. Endika Gil-Uriarte working at Alias Robotics, Spain, has been granted access to the DVRK platform available at The BioRobotics Institute, and he is queued to access as soon as the pandemic will be over.
“This story indicates that TERRINet is really offering users worldwide the opportunity to work on world-class robots with the supervision of international leaders and, not least, in cooperation with other young qualified researchers.” (Prof. Paolo Dario, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy, TERRINet Scientific Coordinator)
