MAE student teams received two awards at the National & Greater Bay Area Youth Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competitions – Hong Kong Regional Award Ceremony 2023 organised by the Hong Kong New Generation Cultural Association.

An Intelligent Robotic System for Neurosurgery

Gold prize in the 9th China International College Students’ “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition

Under the supervision of Professor Cheng Shing-shin from the MAE Department and Professor George Wong Kwok-chu from the Department of Surgery, Yan Junyan and his team members, Qiu Yufu, Chen Jibiao and Fang Haiyang from the MAE Department, have introduced the world’s first flexible robot with an intelligent navigation system for neurosurgery. The robot’s end effector can avoid damaging important functional areas of the brain and achieve a level of precision superior to the average neurosurgeon.

Fig.1: Left: Illustration of the proposed flexible robot during intracerebral hemorrhage evacuation; Right: A prototype of the robot consisting of an outer tube, a precurved inner tube and a flexible tip.

Fig.2: Workflow for the neurosurgical flexible robot operation consisting of map reconstruction module, design optimization module, motion planning module, and control module.

Fig.3: Demonstration of the flexible robot motion control in terms of follow-the-leader motion.

Fig.4: Evaluation of the flexible robot in a human brain phantom.

Yan Junyan (right) and Qiu Yufu (left), students in the MAE Department, receive the gold prize in the 9th China International College Students’ “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition.

Dexterous Multi-layer Rigid-flexible Hybrid Structure Robotic System

Gold prize in the 9th China International College Students’ “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition

The project team comprising Wang Xuchen, Ng Wee-shen and Lin Hongbin has developed a series of multi-layer rigid-flexible hybrid structure robotic products that can dexterously perform difficult tasks in confined spaces, under the supervision of Professor Au Kwok-wai Samuel and Professor Ma Xin from the MAE Department. These products include minimally invasive surgical robots for narrow physiological structures in ear, nose and throat surgery, as well as industrial robots for inspection and secondary machining of aerospace components with physically inaccessible or confined spaces.

Fig.1: Various multi-layer rigid-flexible hybrid structure robotic manipulators.

Fig.2: Three multi-Layer rigid-flexible hybrid structure robots for different applications: compact lightweight handheld robotic surgical instrument (left), robot-arm assisted robotic surgical endoscope (middle), and 16-DOF high-redundant robotic industrial endoscope (right).

Professor Ma Xin (far left), supervisor from the MAE Department, and students Wang Xuchen (second left) and Lin Hongbin (far right) receive the gold prize in the 9th China International College Students’ “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition.

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