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Mechatronics in Medicine

The MIM Lab develops robotic and mechatronics surgical systems for a variety of procedures.

Head of Group

B415C Bessemer Building
South Kensington Campus

+44 (0)20 7594 7046

What we do

The Mechatronics in Medicine Laboratory develops robotic and mechatronics surgical systems for a variety of procedures including neuro, cardiovascular, orthopaedic surgeries, and colonoscopies. Examples include bio-inspired catheters that can navigate along complex paths within the brain (such as EDEN2020), soft robots to explore endoluminal anatomies (such as the colon), and virtual reality solutions to support surgeons during knee replacement surgeries.

Meet the team

Mr Ayhan Aktas
Casual - Student demonstrator - lower rate

Dr Daniel Bautista Salinas
Research Associate

Dr Kaiwen Chen
Research Associate

Mr Zejian Cui
Research Assistant

Mr Connor Daly
Research Postgraduate

Emeritus Professor Brian L Davies FREng
Emeritus Professor

Mr Zhaoyang Jacopo Hu
Research Postgraduate

Dr Hisham M Iqbal
Research Associate

Mr Alex Ranne
Research Postgraduate

Professor Ferdinando M Rodriguez y Baena
Co-Director of Hamlyn Centre, Professor of Medical Robotics

Dr Jialei Shi
Research Associate

Mr Spyridon Souipas
Casual - Other work

Ms Emilia Zari
Research Postgraduate

Citation

BibTex format

@inproceedings{Blyth:2014,
author = {Blyth, WA and Barr, DRW and Hankinson, N and Baena, FRY},
title = {An assessment of mecanum wheels for non-destructive testing (NDT) applications},
year = {2014}
}

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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - We present a study into the suitability of mecanum wheels for obtaining holonomic motion on complex geometries, such as those encountered within NDT. There are a number of industrial inspections with challenging requirements for sensors positioning, such as ultrasonic inspection of nozzle welds in pressure vessels. These challenging trajectories necessitate additional degrees of control over conventional two-axis approaches, for example crawlers or X-Y frame systems, which are restrictive. Mecanum wheels in principle offer an excellent advantage for NDT crawlers, enabling unlimited motion within the plane, however the accurate and controllable behaviour of these wheels on non-planar and non-horizontal surfaces is not well understood. In this paper we illustrate the interactions between a mecanum wheel based crawler and complex geometries and construct a model to assess the performance of the mecanum wheels with respect to the requirements of NDT, to smoothly and precisely follow complex trajectories. The potential of mecanum wheel systems is then contrasted against other wheeled systems in terms of NDT demands, and we conclude that the applicability of mecanum wheels to some tasks offers potential gains yet presents additional challenges in others.
AU  - Blyth,WA
AU  - Barr,DRW
AU  - Hankinson,N
AU  - Baena,FRY
PY  - 2014///
TI  - An assessment of mecanum wheels for non-destructive testing (NDT) applications
ER  -

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