Surgical Robot

A landmark, multi-institution project being led by Vanderbilt engineering professor Robert J. Webster received an award up to $12 million in funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health to develop a fully autonomous surgical robot. Read More

Led by Nabil Simaan, professor of mechanical engineering and a globally renowned expert in robotic surgery, a multidisciplinary team from the Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering has received nearly $4 million to develop a low-cost simulation tool to find solutions that allow safer, minimally invasive surgeries for a wider swath of the global population.  Read More

Surgery for prostate cancer—the most prevalent cancer in men—soon could no longer require cutting through healthy tissue and nerves. Surgeons instead may work with minuscule robots developed at the Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering. Read More

Vanderbilt collaborators focused on minimally invasive prostate surgery are developing an endoscopic robotic system with two-handed dexterity at a much smaller scale than existing options. A key part of the design – telescoping, curved, concentric tubes – received U.S. patent protection in March 2019, the same month the principal investigators secured a $2.1 million R01... Read More

Nabil Simaan’s Advanced Robotics and Mechanism Applications Laboratory at Vanderbilt leads the way in advancing several robotics technologies for medical use, including miniature robots for single small-incision, cochlear implant and minimally invasive throat surgeries. Read More

Bioengineer Nabil Simaan is taking robotic surgical tools to the next level by making them incredibly flexible and situationally aware. Read More

Surgery to relieve the damaging pressure caused by hemorrhaging in the brain is a perfect job for a robot. That is the basic premise of a new image-guided surgical system under development at Vanderbilt University. Read More