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Welcome to the Sheffield Biomedical Robotics Lab!

Find out about our mission and news.

Mission

Realize bionic and surgical robots that show life-like behavior and sustained operation in order to achieve long-term adaptive healthcare. We exploit the computational interplay between materials, structures and mechanics. We take an intertwined approach to combine materials, manufacturing, and control for developing robots for healthcare.  Key concepts: soft robots, embodied artificial intelligence, and human development.

Our focus is the design, fabrication and control of robots that operate long term to restore, repair or replace biological functions and impact human healthcare. Our work includes robotic implants, ingestible capsules, prosthetic wearables (tactile sensors and haptic devices), and plant prostheses.

An example of our work: regenerative robotic implants

Check about our work in child health technology in this video:

Interested to join us?

See our call for interns, MSc, PhDs and postdocs. 

News

14.04.2024 Marco, Menna and Dana gave talks at three workshops at the IEEE RoboSoft Conference in San Diego. Marco won the Best Flash Talk at his session on his presentation about the soft resilient robots - well done, Marco!

15.03.2024 Menna led an outreach event to the Sheffield Girls' School, demoing her work on biohybrid robots to Y2 students. Great to showcase cool robots and inspire young girls!

27.02.2024 Freddy and Dana participated at the Soft Robotics for Healthcare conference in London, where Dana was a keynote speaker and Freddy presented the poster on his work on Soft Bioreactor. Freddy was a co-winner of the Best Poster - well done Freddy!

15.11.2023 Dana and her son, Ayzen, published a children's book: X-Power, suitable for 5-9yo children.  "A dream-filled and shy boy, Ay, joined by his crab friend, receives special powers from Santa, upon request, yet these powers come with attached challenges. Ay will use his hidden inner strengths, such as creativity, love, belief, and perseverance to put his imagination and abilities to create technologies for the benefit of people. He will transform into a superhero monster, a science-mission dragon, an invisibility mirror and a nanny soft robot. His journey makes him stronger and makes a difference to the planet and its people. "

15.09.2023 Our MEng final year students had a great experience presenting their MEng project as a poster at the Towards Autonomous Robots and Systems (TAROS) conference in Cambridge: Congratulations Saloni Hajare and Seth Roberts on your fantastic effort and accomplishment! Furthermore, Saloni's abstract was awarded the Best Innovation Paper award and was a finalist for the Best Abstract. What an achievement for them!

14.05.2023 Dana is presenting the lab's work at the Pint of Science in Sheffield under the title 'Living with robots inside our body'.

14.03.2023 Congratulations to Chester for winning the best poster at the ACSE PGR Symposium!

30.10.2022 Our lab together jointly with artists from Sheffield Hallam University have a piece of work at the Caring Futures exhibition at Sølvberget Galleri, Stavanger, Norway. September 17-December 18, 2022. The project is entitled 'Pneumatic kitchen: Hand-holding Gloves' and belong to a speculative emphatic clothing line. Credits: Kaisu Koski and Roland van Dierendonck (Lab4Living, Sheffield Hallam University), in collaboration with Kripa A. Binny, Joanna Jones, and Dana Damian (Sheffield Biomedical Robotics Lab). Pictures below are courtesy of Kaisu Koski.

30.10.2022 Our lab together jointly with artists from Sheffield Hallam University have a piece of work at the Caring Futures exhibition at Sølvberget Galleri, Stavanger, Norway. September 17-December 18, 2022. The project is entitled 'Pneumatic kitchen: Hand-holding Gloves' and belong to a speculative emphatic clothing line. Credits: Kaisu Koski and Roland van Dierendonck (Lab4Living, Sheffield Hallam University), in collaboration with Kripa A. Binny, Joanna Jones, and Dana Damian (Sheffield Biomedical Robotics Lab).

16.09.2022 Congratulations to Freddy Forbes for having received the IET Best Poster Award for his poster entitled "Characterization of an Inflatable Soft Actuator and Tissue Interaction for In Vitro Mechanical Stimulation of Tissue" at TAROS 2022.

19.04.2022 Well done to Marco Pontin who won the Best Poster Award at the ACSE's PhD Student Symposium! More on the story here: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/acse/news/phd-students-showcase-their-research-department-symposium

16.03.2022 We are part of a market discovery programme to understand the implications of our soft robotic implant on the stakeholders. If you are interested in our novel technology that grows bowel for the treatment of the Short Bowel Syndrome, check this page, and don't hesitate to get in contact with our team.

12.09.2021 September 2021: IEEE's Soft Robotics Podcast features Dana and Shuhei discussing about the limits of soft robotics, bio-hybrid robots, and challenges in robot's autonomy.  The podcast episode can be found on the following platforms: Spotify, Soundcloud, YouTube.

15.06.2021 SBRL takes part at the UK Robotics Festival's Robotics Live Lab Demo. Joanna and Marco will demonstrate one of our soft implantable devices, and give the audience opportunity for real time Q&A. Tune in at here on 23rd June at 4pm UK time.

06.06.2021 Dana and Shuhei Miyashita of ACSE, together with Ben Taylor and Tom Howard of MEE have been recognised as Highly Commended for the 2021 Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Learning and Teaching in the following category 'Digital innovation' for the redesign of the Mechatronics teaching modules during the pandemic to support creative thinking and innovation based on the delivery of take-home kits. 

21.04.2021 Eduardo successfully defended his PhD thesis 'Design of Soft Implantable Devices For Tissue Regeneration'. Congratulations, Eduardo!

25.03.2021 Dana gave a talk about 'Robot's Vulnerabilities In Vivo' at the Embodied Intelligence Workshop, organised by the University of Cambridge between 24-26th March.

24.03.2021 Congratulations to Joanna for winning the top prize for her poster entitled 'Resistance Tuning of Soft Strain Sensor based on Saline Concentration and Volume Changes' at the ACSE PGR Symposium. Eduardo also gave a talk about his research overview.

18.03.2021 Dana and Shuhei, joined by Ayzen, co-authored a children's book where they translate a recent scientific article on their work on the ingestible origami robot into a picture children's story. More details here.

02.03.2021 SBRL participated at the first Child Health Technology Conference organised by NIHR Children and Young People MedTech Co-operative, where Dana gave a seminar talk and Abi introduced our robotic bioreactor.

28.02.2021 Congratulations to Abi, Nicolas, Marco, Joanna and Eduardo for their two articles accepted at the IEEE ICRA for this year!

04.09.2020 Dana got recognised for her graduate students supervision through the "Supervision All-rounder" program at the university. "Thank you to our excellent PhD students in our group who are doing my mentorship and supervision as exciting as it can be. " - (Dana)

05.06.2020 Congratulations to our MSc alumna Lavanya Balasubramanian and our MEng alumnus Tom Wray as their 2020 ICRA paper, "Fault Tolerant Control in Shape-Changing Internal Robots", received the IEEE ICRA 2020 Best Paper Award in Medical Robotics. Our work is shown in the video here.

11.05.2020 Congratulations to Joanna, Zach and Eduardo for their accepted TAROS paper. We are excited to present this work.

23.03.2020 Dana gave an online talk at the "Human-Robot Medical Interaction" Workshop during the ACM/IEEE Human-Robot Interaction Conference, where she presented our lab's work on resilient robots and device-tissue interfaces for implantable technologies.

03.12.2019 Fully-fundedPhD scholarships available. Check our People's page for more information. 

26.09.2019 Eduardo and Lavanya of Sheffield Biomedical Robotics Lab showed our implantable robots at the annual Caring Together Clinical Summit at the Sheffield Children's Hospital.

(picture: courtesy of Eduardo)

27.06.2019 Dana, Joanna and Eduardo have attended the Hamlyn Symposium in London this week, where Eduardo gave an oral presentation about his soft helical actuator for tissue repair. It was great to see the interest and enthusiasm in bionic technology in the medical robotics community.

17.05.2019 We have a postdoc position available in our lab. Join us in our endeavor to develop the future generation of medical and surgical robotic technology. You can apply here. Find out more information about the position here.

16.05.2019 Congratulations to Eduardo and Joanna for having their paper accepted as an oral presentation at the Hamlyn Symposium. We will be in London this June to showcase our soft-matter implants for tissue growth.

02.04.2019 Dana received the EPSRC New Investigator Award. This award will allow us to advance new soft in vivo robots for the tissue repair and regeneration. We are excited to find talented researchers and collaborate with our amazing partners on this project. 

27.02.2019 Eduardo has won the 'Best presentation' award at the PGR Symposium organized by ACSE. Eduardo introduced the advancements he's made in soft actuation for regenerative robotic implants. Well done, Eduardo!

14.02.2019 Our group showcased our medical robots at the Robotics in Paediatrics and Child Health Showcase that took place at the Sheffield Children's Hospital. It was great to meet with clinicians and get to know more about their needs and possible applications for our robots.

19.12.2018 Our ingestible robot in collaboration with Dr Shuhei Miyashita of University of Sheffield and Prof Daniela Rus at MIT features in a National Geographic article, January 2019 issue, among the 12 innovations that will revolutionize the future of medicine.

20.09.2018. Our lab hosted an exciting visit and lab tour for clinicians from the Sheffield Children's Hospital, in which we demonstrated our medical devices.

30.08.2018 Our work on robotic implants features in an article in the Communications of the ACM Magazine by Gregory Mone. Here you can read about the new and exciting era of robotic implants in surgery and tissue regeneration.

30.06.2018 Congratulations to our lab members and alumni - Can Kavak, Xiao Fan Wu, Lilyan Leblanc, Sarunas Nejus, Manuela Garcia, Hamdi Tokel, Eduardo Perez Guagnelli, YanQiang Liu - for having their paper accepted to IROS 2018!

29.06.2018 Dana has been recognized for her postgraduate supervision through the university's #Supervisionary program in the category "Recognising good all-round supervision that has really made a difference to doctoral students", which takes the opinion to the current postgraduate students in the university.

25.06.2018 During the Sheffield Robotics Showcase, our lab opened its door to showcase demos of our medical robots. We also organized a Care Robotics Workshop on the theme of 'Care robots and what they mean for the younger generation', with fantastic speakers and exciting discussions from clinicians, industry representatives, social scientists and robotics researchers.

19.06.2018 We are organizing a Care Robotics Workshop within a series of workshops that aim to bring forward related research at the University of Sheffield (UoS) and regional academia, industry and clinic to understand our strengths, and start an interdisciplinary dialog to lay foundations for future research and technology translation collaboration. The workshop takes place on 20st June, in Diamond, Workroom1, from 1-3pm. Please join us for some fantastic speakers and stimulating discussions!

21.05.2018 Dana gave a talk at the "ICRA2018 Workshop on Self-healing, Growing and Evolutionary Soft Robots". YanQiang and Dana also presented our work on the soft robotic implant in the interactive session. 

17.05.2018 Our work on soft implantable robots will be presented in Brisbane, Australia, at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation next week. 

Our video on soft robotic implants has just been released on Youtube:

Also, here is our recent work on surgical robotic patches developed with the York Microrobotics Lab, also presented at ICRA 2018:

23.03.2018 Our lab together with the York's Microrobotics Lab held the 2nd Workshop on Manufacturing and Automation of Future Health Technology in the University of York's campus. Thank you to Haruna and Eduardo for organizing a productive and fun event, and for everyone for their participation.

09.03.2018 Congratulations to Eduardo for passing his Confirmation Review! Continue to do a great work!

08.03.2018 Eduardo won the Best Poster award at the ACSE PGR Symposium. Well done, Eduardo!

14.01.2018 Congratulations to our lab members, Eduardo Perez Guagnelli, Sarunas Nejus, Dr. YanQiang Liu, and collaborators for the acceptance of two papers at ICRA 2018!

10.01.2018 Our work in collaboration with Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School has been published in Science Robotics.

07.01.2018 PhD positions available: University of Sheffield is offerring PhD scholarships to talented PhDs across the globe. For more info, have a look at this link: http://shef.ac/2A6ckGg. The deadline for PhD applications is Wednesday 24th January 2018 at 5pm (GMT). If you're interested to join our research lab, please contact Dana Damian (d.damian@sheffield.ac.uk).

13.11. 2017 Our former lab member, Xiaofan Wu, received his MSc degree with distinction. Congratulations, Xiaofan!

31.10.2017 Eduardo has successfully passed his Critical Appraisal exercise. Congratulations, Eduardo!

25.10.2017 Dana gave a talk about robotics in medicine at the Manchester Science Festival.

13.10.2017 SBRL and York Microrobotics Group have jointly organized the "Manufacturing and Automation of Future Health Technology" workshop at the University of Sheffield. 

27.09.2017 Our collaborators at York have published an inspiring paper on robotic metamorphosis in Science Robotics 

12.09.2017 Eduardo and his team win 1st place in the AAATE Student Innovation Tournament, Sheffield.

18.07.2017 This week TAROS conference is taking place in Surrey. Our former members, Alex Thorn and Emily Ingham will attend to give an oral and a poster presentation about their work in our lab, respectively. See ACSE News article: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/acse/news/acse_student_presents_paper_at_conference-1.717641

03.07.2017 Some of our lab members (Eduardo, Yanqiang, and Dana) participated at the 2017 Soft Robotics Workshop in Cambridge. Both Eduardo and Dana gave a talk on the latest lab developments in soft robots for bio-engineering. Eduardo left with a second prize and a champagne for his team's proposal on an assistive technology. 

23.06.2017 Eduardo is giving a poster presentation on our lab's and his research to an assembly of executive members of Conacyt Mexico.