Mechanical Engineering Researchers, Students Look to Perfect Robotic Surgery Technology

Contact: Mohsen Shahinpoor, (207) 581-2143; George Manlove, (207) 581-3756

ORONO — University of Maine mechanical engineers and their students are taking robotics to a whole new level with several new and ongoing research projects, including robotic surgery.

By designing, configuring and testing smart computerized machinery composed of cables, circuits, electronic motors and servos, they hope to revolutionize some surgical procedures, including ways for doctors to operate on patients thousands of miles away.

“The question that we wanted to answer is (how) to allow a surgeon to perform robotic surgery on a patient away from the patient,” says Mohsen Shahinpoor, chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “Second, we want to make any robotic tool or end-effector such as forceps that is inserted through incision inside the body of the patient to perform robotic surgery to be disposable after surgery.”

And third, Shahinpoor adds, it is important to equip any robotic tool or end-effector that is inserted in a patient with a “feel sensor” to enable surgeons performing long-distance robotic surgery to receive force in addition to visual feedback.

“For example, suppose we had a battlefield, and a soldier gets injured. The soldier needs immediate surgery,” Shahinpoor says. “The way we are now moving, we haven’t achieved it yet, but it may be possible in the very near future that a surgeon here in the U.S. operates on a soldier in Kabul, Afghanistan.

“Perfect surgery completes everything,” he says. “That’s another vision. Just imagine the implications of that for remote areas in a state like Maine.”

Students at both graduate and undergraduate levels are getting hands-on experience in the field of robotics, and Shahinpoor frequently introduces Maine schoolchildren to robotics during visits to his Biomedical Engineering and Robotic Surgery laboratories.