Human-Machine interfaces in Medical Robotics

Yanpei Huang is a lecturer at the Department of Engineering and Design, University of Sussex, UK. Before joining Sussex, she was a post-doctoral researcher in the Human Robotics Group, at the Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, U.K, where she investigated movement augmentation strategies in Virtual Reality. Yanpei Huang completed her Ph.D. study at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, with a focus on the development of intuitive human-machine interfaces for robotic surgery. Prior to the Ph.D. study, she received the M.Sc. degree in Manufacturing Systems & Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her current research interests include human-machine interaction and medical robotics.

Ziwei Wang is a lecturer in Robotics and the Director of Advanced Robotic Teleoperation Lab, at the School of Engineering, Lancaster University, U.K. He received the PhD from the Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, China. During the period of 2020 and 2022, he was a research associate with the Human Robotics Group, the Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, U.K. His research interests focus on autonomous robot, fuzzy control, human-robot shared control and computational intelligence for medical applications, aiming at enhancing human sensorimotor capability and overall robotic system performance. Yongkun Zhao is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Engineering's Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, United Kingdom. Xiaoxiao Cheng is a Lecturer in Engineering Systems for Robotics at the University of Manchester. Before joining in the University of Manchester, he worked as a Research Associate at Imperial College London from 2020 to 2023 and a Research Fellow at Stanford University from 2019 to 2020. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from The University of Melbourne in 2019, M. Phil. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2014, and B. Eng. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology in 2011. His research focuses on developing intelligent autonomous systems and human-machine interfaces by considering and integrating factors from robotics, control, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience.

Wenjie Lai earned her Ph.D. in the field of flexible endoscopic surgical robotics from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, in 2021. She completed her undergraduate studies at NTU in 2015, graduating with the first-class honour in Mechatronics under the SM3 scholarship.

Currently, she works as a research fellow at CREATE, NTU, in the Smart Grippers for Soft Robotics (SGSR) program. After completing her Ph.D., Dr. Lai ventured into the industry at Ronovo Surgical, a Shanghai-based startup specializing in laparoscopic robots. There, she immersed herself in the development of performance metrics for robot-assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) instruments, gaining valuable insights into real-world challenges and industry demands.

Dr. Lai has made several contributions to academia, with publications in prestigious journals such as TMECH, RAL, and ABME, and presentations at top-tier international conferences like ICRA. She actively serves as a reviewer for journals such as Soft Robotics, TMECH, and TIM, as well as conferences like IROS and Robosoft. She holds multiple patents in the field of sensors, surgical robots, and soft robots, including one granted in both the US and China. Dr. Lai's research interests include surgical robotics, soft robotics, haptic feedback, and sensor development. Nicolas Herzig is currently a Lecturer in Industrial Automation, Mechatronics and Control Engineering in the School of Engineering and Informatics, within the Department of Engineering and Design, and he is a member of the Robotics and Mechatronics Systems Research Group. He received the PhD degree in Control Engineering from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquees (INSA) de Lyon, Universite de Lyon, Lyon, France in 2016. He also holds an M.Eng. degree in Mechanical Engineering and an M.Sc. in Mechatronics from Polytech Annecy Chambery, Annecy, France. From 2016 to 2020, He have been working on two EPSRC-funded projects for medical robotics at The University of Sheffield, Imperial College London, and King's College London. Before his PhD degree, He worked for 18 months for 2 French start-ups where he used to design Mechatronic solutions for industrial applications. His research interests are focused on the development of new technologies for Robotic Systems. He is particularly interested in Mechatronics Design and Control Engineering for compliant and soft robots. He aims to address the scientific challenges that limit Human-Robot or Robot-Environment interactions. His research is applied in various several fields such as industrial robotics, biomedical, and nuclear decommissioning. Jiatong Jiang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London. Her research focuses on neurorehabilitation system design and medical electronics.