Dr. Liu will co-organize a workshop titled “Taking the Fantastic Voyage: Small-Scale Robots as a Biomedical Technology” at the upcoming 2024 NSF FRR-NRI PI Meeting in Baltimore, scheduled for April 28-30, 2024.
Workshop Description:
Overview
Small-scale robotics, those spanning from nanoscale to several centimeters, holds the key to unprecedented research breakthroughs across diverse fields. Of note is medicine, where robots could potentially be used in remarkable new applications, ranging from drug delivery to surgery to even micro-scale dentistry. Yet moving microrobots into medical applications presents a broad array of complex, interwoven challenges. How do we design and manufacturing of small-scale robots? What should be used for actuation and control in the body? And how do we meet the biocompatibility and safety requirements inherit to medical technology? The aim of this workshop is to convene NSF-funded PIs who have expertise in robotics, materials science, mechanical engineering, computer science, biomedical engineering, and medicine. Our goal is to explore these pivotal areas, creating a vibrant forum for knowledge exchange, collaborative exploration, and innovation.
The workshop will start with a series of keynote presentations, laying the foundational knowledge, identifying key challenges, and discussing good “first-indicator” applications of microrobots in medicine. Following the keynotes, panel discussions will provide a platform for deeper exploration of the themes introduced, encouraging interaction and discussion among the participants.
Potential Keynote Topics:
• Manufacturing and Materials for Biomedical Microrobots: An exploration of state-of-the-art fabrication processes at nano, micro, and meso-scales, and how to manage biocompatibility requirements without sacrificing manufacturability and scalability.
• Power transfer and Telemetry for Robots in the body: A deep dive into untethered power transfer/telemetry mechanisms, including magnetic, acoustic, thermal, and optical techniques, and their implications for autonomous robot operation in vivo.
• First indicator Applications: A discussion of where microrobots may find a “killer app” in the medical space.