Trends in Medical and Rehabilitation Robotics
Or, The Robot Doctor Will See You Now

George A. Bekey PhD

October 25, 2006
CLU - Richter Hall Ahmanson Science Building

The use of robots in medicine, surgery and rehabilitation is growing rapidly.  In this talk we’ll discuss three aspects of this field:  (1) rehabilitation robotics, with emphasis on physical therapy robots, robot wheelchairs and other assistive devices; (2) surgical robotics, including the use of robots for hip replacement ("RoboDoc"), brain surgery and the recent development of large systems like the DaVinci robot to assist in minimally invasive surgery; and (3) a few comments on medical robotics, where major effort is being devoted to development of miniature cameras and sensory systems to be swallowed (for diagnosis of the gastrointestinal tract) or injected into the bloodstream and steered magnetically.  Recent work in micro-robotics is an important part of this work.  Much of the work in this field depends on imaging and other sensory modalities.  Progress in this field depends greatly on social and economic factors, and we plan to discuss some of them from a US perspective where issues of insurance, liability and cost play major roles.

George Bekey
USC Professor Emeritus

Dr. Bekey  founded the robotics research and teaching program at USC.  His research interests include autonomous robotic systems, multi-robot cooperation and human - robot interaction.  He received his Ph.D. in Engineering  from UCLA.    He joined the faculty at USC in 1962,  served as Chairman  of  the  Electrical  Engineering - Systems  Department (1978-1982),  Computer Science Department (1984 - 1989) and was Associate Dean  for Research of the USC School of Engineering (1996 - 2000).  Dr. Bekey  is a Member  of  the  National Academy  of  Engineering,  Fellows of both the IEEE  and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).   He is  Editor in Chief  of the journal  Autonomous  Robots,  and Founding Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation.
His new book entitled "Autonomous Robots" was published by MIT Press in May 2005. He is affiliated with a medical devices startup company in San Luis Obispo and a robotics startup in Los Angeles. He also teaches part-time in the Biomedical Engineering program at California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo.