NSF CAREER Award to study Lifesaving Capsule Robots
February 2015. The National Science Foundation awarded Pietro Valdastri with a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant. The title of the proposal is “CAREER: Lifesaving Capsule Robots”. The goal of this research is to characterize fundamental principles at the intersection of robotics, magnetism, and control which will enable intelligent capsule robots to amplify the diagnostic and interventional capabilities of gastroenterologists and surgeons. Through this project, the science and application of capsule robot architectures, real-time control, and teleoperation of magnetic pill-size devices will be advanced. Further, computationally efficient approximations of the magnetic field and models for capsule-tissue interaction, combined with miniature wireless electronics, will enable proprioceptive sensing techniques that can be effectively adopted in clinical settings. For the first time in magnetically manipulated capsule robots, environmental awareness and proprioceptive sensing will be leveraged to explore the full spectrum of human-robot interaction. This research will advance medical science as well by enabling new diagnostic and therapeutic procedures targeting organs deep inside the human body. This grant is active from February 1st, 2015 till January 31st, 2020. At this link the press release by the Vanderbilt School of Engineering.