Surgical Robotics Software Architecture and Control at University of Leuven, Bel

(ref. BAP-2021-251)

Laatst aangepast : 28/07/2021

The robot-assisted surgery group (http://www.mech.kuleuven.be/en/pma/research/ras) is an international, growing, dynamic and multi-disciplinary research group consisting of members of RAM (Robotics, Automation and Mechatronics Division), BMe (BioMechanical Engineering) and SI (Smart Instrumentation) research groups which maintain tight and multiple collaborations with UZ Leuven, the largest university hospital in Belgium, located at 10 minutes ride (bicycle) of the department. The group has coordinated several ambitious EU-projects such as SCATh and CASCADE project on robotic catheterization, EurEyeCase on robotic eye-surgery. Through the GIFT-SURG project we have a large experience in fetal surgery where we work closely with University College London and King’s College London. Recently we are coordinating ATLAS, a Marie-Curie Training Network on Autonomous Intraluminal Surgery, participate in ARTERY on advanced technology for radiationfree catheter robotics and coordinate FAROS, a project that aims to encode physical intelligence based on non-visual sensing in robotic Spine Surgery. Surgical robotic autonomy to cope with the complexity with the surgical tasks forms a common denominator among these projects. Other active research lines include amongst others bilateral teleoperation, haptics, shared control, bio-mechanical tissue modelling, real-time FEM, human intention recognition, surgical training and robotic laser surgery.

Responsibilities

The successful candidate will help build up a framework for supporting autonomous robotic surgery, and support building up complex robotic applications linked to our ongoing H2020 EU projects FAROS (https://h2020faros.eu/), ARTERY, ATLAS (https://atlas-itn.eu/) and the GIFT-Surg project (https://www.gift-surg.ac.uk/). The Robot-Assisted Surgery research group collaborates closely with the Robotic Research group of KU Leuven and aims to expand middle-ware and task formalisms to for surgical robotics applications.The successful candidate will work with PhD students active in this area and will get the opportunity to identify new contributions in the respective fields. The successful candidate will have a large responsibility for these particular projects, but is also expected to pro-actively engage and collaborate with parallel activities in the research group.

Profile

We seek outstanding postdoctoral applicants to work on surgical robotics software architecture for challenging medical applications. A fully-funded position starting May 2021 for the duration of one year, with possible extension, is available. We are looking for goal-oriented candidates with proven experience in programming and control of surgical robots, comfortable with ROS/ROS2 and ideally also with experience in taskframe formalisms to control surgical robots. Knowledge of OROCOS or similar middlewares is a clear bonus, but interest in real-time robot control is a must.Candidates in the possession of a PhD in engineering on topics such as real-time operating systems, robot control, medical image processing, mechatronics or general robotics are invited to apply.

Offer

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Leuven offers a full-time fully paid postdoctoral position in surgical robotics control for a duration of 1 year that can be extended upon mutual agreement.

Interested?

For more information please contact Prof. dr. ir. Emmanuel Vander Poorten, tel.: +32 16 32 25 28, mail: [email protected] or dr. Gianni Borghesan, tel.: +32 16 32 92 67, mail: [email protected].

KU Leuven seeks to foster an environment where all talents can flourish, regardless of gender, age, cultural background, nationality or impairments. If you have any questions relating to accessibility or support, please contact us at [email protected].