Title: Unlocking Autonomous Medical Robotics: From Image Guided Systems to Humanoid Robot Platforms
Speaker: Prof. Michael Yip (UCSD)
Attendance Link: https://tinyurl.com/robosem-spr-2026
Time: Friday Apr 24th, 3:00-4:00PM
Abstract: Despite remarkable progress in clinical adoption over the past two decades, surgical robotic systems remain large, physically constrained, and limited in autonomy. Today's commercial platforms are teleoperated and mechanically restricted to specific procedures, requiring trained teams to set up and operate them, and offering limited medical image integration and AI guidance. These conventional systems are also expensive and challenging to deploy and difficult to scale. Meeting the evolving needs of modern healthcare requires rethinking not just how robots are used in surgery, but what they can become—shifting from rigid, teleoperated tools toward fully autonomous robot partners in the operating room. This talk presents our research on enabling greater surgical autonomy through the lense of robot learning. I will close with our recent work on human-robot teaming using humanoid systems, examining the limitations of the current state of the art and the opportunities ahead for research and deployment.
Please visit https://stanfordasl.github.io/robotics_seminar/ for this quarter’s lineup of speakers. Although we encourage live in-person attendance, recordings of talks will be posted also.