Plenary Talk I,
Chair: Prof. Kostas
Kyriakopoulos, N.T.U.A.
Location: Palm Ballrooms 3, 4, and 5
Biorobotics Science and Engineering
Prof. Paolo Dario
Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna
CRIM & ARTS Labs
Polo Sant’Anna Valdera
Abstract
Biorobotics is an emerging and deeply interdisciplinary scientific-technological field. Based primarily on research in Robotics, Natural Science, and Biomedical Engineering, Biorobotics is now spreading its cultural and application scope towards many sectors of engineering, of basic and applied science, and of humanities.
The main focus of Biorobotics is to analyze biological systems from a “biomechatronic” viewpoint, trying to understand the scientific and engineering principles underlying their extraordinary performance. Biomechatronics is a recent paradigm of machine design, which considers a mechatronic system together with its interactions with the external world and with the human operator.
Biorobotics pursues two main
objectives:
a) from a scientific viewpoint, to generate new knowledge on how biological systems work and interact with the environment and with human beings. This new knowledge can be acquired by modeling living creatures as well as by building biomimetic robots. The development of bio-inspired machines provides novel insight into the biological systems they are inspired from, ranging from invertebrates to humans;
b) from an engineering viewpoint, to develop innovative theory and technology for designing and building high performance robots. These robots, which may or may not be bio-inspired, will incorporate scientific knowledge on biological systems in order to be more effective and acceptable than traditional robots.
This lecture will introduce the scientific framework of Biorobotics and will discuss how Biorobotics addresses its goals, with reference to some significant case studies, including the design of different hybrid bionic systems, integrating neuroscience models, human-robot interfaces and advanced robotic platforms.
Short Biography
Paolo Dario received his Dr. Eng.
Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of
Pisa, Italy, in 1977. He is currently a Professor of Biomedical Robotics at the
Scuola Superiore Sant’ Anna in
His main research interests are
in the fields of medical robotics, biorobotics, neuro-robotics and micro/nanoengineering.
Specifically, he is active mainly in the design of miniature and microrobotics systems for endoluminal
surgery, and in advanced prosthetics. He is the coordinator of many national
and European projects, the editor of two books on the subject of robotics, and
the author of more than 200 scientific papers (90 on ISI journals). He is
Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor and member of the Editorial Board of many
international journals. He has been a plenary invited speaker in many
international conferences.
Prof. Dario has served as
President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society in the years 2002-2003,
and he is currently Co-Chair of the Technical Committees on Bio-robotics of the
same Society. Prof. Dario is an IEEE Fellow, a Fellow of the European Society
on Medical and Biological Engineering, and a recipient of many honors and
awards, such as the Joseph Engelberger Award. He is
also a member of the Board of the International Foundation of Robotics Research
(IFRR).
He is the General Chair and Program Chair of the 1st IEEE RAS/EMBS Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob 2006), and the General Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2007).