Dandan Zhang

Affiliation: University of Bristol

Ava Lovelace Building, F10
Bristol, UK
ye21623@bristol.ac.uk

Education

MRes of Medical Robotics and Image-Guided Intervention, Imperial College London
The Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery; The Department of Surgery and Cancer & The Department of Computing;
• MRes Degree (Distinction) & Diploma of the Imperial College (DIC)
• Honor: Faculty of Medicine Dean's Prize
PhD of Medical Robotics, Imperial College London
The Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery; The Department of Computing;
• PhD Project A: “From Master-Slave Control to Human-Robot Shared Control for Surgical Robotics”
• PhD Project B: “Perception and Manipulation of Microrobots via Optical Tweezer”
• Major Research Interests: cooperative control (human-robot shared control), machine learning, robot learning, micro-robotics, micro-manipulation
• I have been working for Program Grant EP/P012779/1 (Microrobotics for Surgery), which is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
• Honor: Amazon PhD prizes for outstanding achievement in robotics

International Conference Presentations

1. 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2016 IROS), Oral Presentation, “WALS-Robot: A Compact and Transformable Wheel-Arm-Leg-Sucker Hybrid Robot”
2. 2017 The UK-RAS Network Conference on Robotics and Autonomous System (2017 UKRAS), Poster Presentation, “Motor Imagery Classification based on RNNs with Spatiotemporal-Energy Feature Extraction”
3. 2018 Hamlyn Symposium for Medical Robotics (2018 HSMR), Poster Presentation, “An Ergonomic Interaction Workspace Analysis Method for the Optimal Design of a Surgical Master Manipulator”
4. 2019 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (2019 ICRA), Interactive Presentation, “A Self-Adaptive Motion Scaling Framework for Surgical Robot Remote Control”
5. 2019 Hamlyn Symposium for Medical Robotics (2019 HSMR), Poster Presentation, “A Novel Hybrid Master-Slave Control Interface for Surgical Robot Remote Control”; “User Studies for the Determination of Master-Slave Mapping Strategy for a Compact Master Manipulator”
6. 2019 International Conference on Manipulation, Automation and Robotics at Small Scales (2019 MARSS), Oral Presentation, “Towards Microrobot Out-of-Plane Control Via Planar Multi-Spot Optical Tweezer”
7. 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2019 IROS), Oral Presentation,
“A Handheld Master Controller for Robot-Assisted Microsurgery”,
“Design and Verification of a Portable Master Manipulator Based on an Effective Workspace Analysis Framework”,
“WSRender: A Workspace Analysis and Visualization Toolbox for Robotic Manipulator Design and Verification”
8. 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (2020 ICRA), Virtual Presentation, “An Ergonomic Shared Workspace Analysis Framework for the Optimal Placement of a Compact Master Control Console”
9. 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2020 IROS), Virtual Presentation, “Supervised Semi-Autonomous Control for Surgical Robot Based on Bayesian Optimization”
10. 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (2021 ICRA), Virtual Presentation, “Surgical Gesture Recognition Based on Bidirectional Multi-Layer Independently RNN with Explainable Spatial Feature Extraction”

Review Service
• IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
• IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
• IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics (T-MRB)
• IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and Mechatronics (ARM)
• The European Robotics Research Infrastructure Network (TerriNet)
• IEEE Transactions on Neural Network and Learning System (TNNLS)
• IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TNNLS)
• IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)
• IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)
• Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS)
• Frontiers in Neurorobotics
• IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO)
• laser & photonics reviews

Previous Key Projects

Robot Learning
• Developed a Sim-to-Real Transfer Framework for Adaptive Trajectory Generation
• Developed Hierarchical Imitation Learning Algorithm for Service Robot
• Explored Transfer Learning, Domain Adaptation for Robotic Manipulation

Micro Manipulation
• Constructed a Robot-Aided Optical Tweezer Platform for Micromanipulation
• Developed Two Control Strategies for Optical Manipulation of Microrobot Via Planar OT
• Conducted Force Characterization for Optical Manipulation
• Developed Multi-Task Learning and Domain Adaptation Algorithms for Microrobot 6D Pose Estimation
• Explored Few-Shot Learning for Microrobot 3D Pose Estimation

Robot-Assisted Microsurgery
• Built a Master Controller for Robot-Assisted Microsurgery Training
• Developed a Robot Operating System (ROS) Interface Based Microsurgical Robot Research Kit (MRRK) for Robot-Assisted Microsurgery Research
• Investigated Microsurgical Tool Tracking Algorithm
• Developed Hybrid Mapping Strategy and Haptic Guidance for Robot Control

Human-Robot Shared Control for Laparoscopic Surgery
• Proposed a Self-Adaptive Motion Scaling Framework to improve the surgical teleoperation efficiency
• Explored Surgical Gesture Segmentation and Recognition based on machine learning (HMM, GMM, K-means) and deep learning Methods (LSTM, CNN)
• Proposed the Concept of Implicit Human-Robot Shared Control
• Conducted Real-time Surgical Skill Analysis and Cross-Domain Transfer Learning for Skill Assessment
• Investigated a Framework of Supervised Semi-Autonomous Control
• Employed Baysesian Optimization for User Specific Parameter Optimization

Master Manipulator (Hamlyn CRM) for Robotic Surgery
• Designed, Built up and Verified a Compact Master Manipulator: Hamlyn CRM
• Explored Mechanical Design, Master-Slave Mapping, Visual Alignment, Multi-Sensor Fusion for Hamlyn CRM
• Built up an Open Source Workspace Analysis Package
• Proposed Master Manipulator Design Theory
• Finished MRes thesis with the title of “Design and Validation of a Compact Master Manipulator for Robotic Surgery Control and Training”

Other Projects

A BCI framework for Nao Robot Control
Control System for MEMS Based Micro Thruster Array
Multi-Agent Robotic System
Hybrid Mobile Robot
A Bioinspired Reconnaissance Robot