Advancements in Actuation, Sensing, and Control Schemes for Intelligent Medical Robotics

Dear Colleagues,

Robot-assisted surgeries have become a natural progression for standard surgical procedures and are a widely-discussed topic in today’s healthcare and medical fields. The promise of enhanced efficacy necessitates the coordination of responsive actuation mechanisms, accurate sensory perception, and intelligent control schemes. Apart from the performance of any individual aspect, the compatibility among them is also a significant challenge, especially for the design of actuators under special intra-operative visualization modalities (e.g., magnetic resonance imaging). At the same time, intuitive interactions between the operator and robot rely on the cooperation of diverse sensory devices and robust control algorithms to accommodate ergonomic and safety concerns. Surgical augmented reality (AR) has also become a promising area for assisting surgical operations and can serve as a powerful auxiliary tool in robot-assisted surgeries.

This forthcoming Special Issue will include high-quality publications spanning (but not limited to) the following topics pertinent to medical robotics:

• robotic mechanical design;
• image-guided robot-assisted surgery;
• actuator design;
• kinematic/dynamic modeling;
• data-driven/learning-based control;
• control with cyber-physical systems in the operating room;
• sensing techniques and/or fusion;
• AR in interventional operations and/or medical skill training;
• intuitive human–robot control interface;
• evaluation of robotic systems for medical applications.

Both theoretical and practical contributions are welcome. If you have suggestions that you would like to discuss beforehand, please feel free to contact us. We look forward to and welcome your participation in this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Ka-Wai Kwok
Prof. Dr. Iulian I. Iordachita
Prof. Dr. Ken Masamune
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Actuators is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• medical robotics
• image-guided surgery
• modeling and control
• artificial intelligence in control and sensing
• novel actuator designs
• soft continuum/endoscopic robots
• AR-assisted operations