Interested in joining the group?
University of Sheffield is offerring PhD scholarships to talented PhDs across the globe. If you're interested to join our research lab, have a look at http://shef.ac/2A6ckGg or contact Dr. Damian. The deadline for PhD applications is January 2019.

Available PhD positions:
  1. Robotic Implants
  2. Ingestible Surgical Robots
  3. Life-long Sustainable Medical Robots
Internship, MEng, BEng positions:
  1. Robotic Implants for Tissue Repair
  2. Ingestible Surgical Robots
  3. Biomedical Robots

News Our work in collaboration with Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School has been published in Science Robotics.
Check out the paper.

Research 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. Some of our work includes robotic implants, prosthetic wearables (tactile sensors and haptic devices), and plant prostheses.
  1. Robotic Implant for Tissue Repair
    In this project, we develop a robotic implant that sustains the growth of esophageal tissues to reconstruct the gastro-intestinal tract. The application has direct impact on long-gap esophageal atresia. The sensorimotor capabilities of the robot allows adaptive control of tissue growth while maintaining patient comfort. The robotic implant enables new approaches to tissue engineering and is a precursor to a clinical device.

    Dana D. Damian, Karl Price, Slava Arabagi, Ignacio Berra, Zurab Machaidze, Sunil Manjila, Shogo Shimada, Assunta Fabozzo, Gustavo Arnal, David Van Story, Jeffrey D. Goldsmith, Agoston T. Agoston, Chunwoo Kim, Russell Jennings, Peter D. Ngo, Michael Manfredi, Pierre E. Dupont (2018) In vivo tissue regeneration with robotic implants, Science Robotics 3, eaaq0018

    Dana D. Damian, Slava Arabagi, Assunta Fabozzo, Peter Ngo, Russell Jennings, Michael Manfredi, and Pierre E. Dupont (2014) Robotic Implant to Apply Tissue Traction Forces in the Treatment of Esophageal Atresia, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 786-792.

  2. Ingestible robots for gastrointestinal wounds treatment
    Developing miniature robots that can carry out versatile clinical procedures inside the body under the remote instructions of medical professionals has been a long time challenge. We are carrying out research and development of biocompatible capsule-size reconfigurable robots that can be ingested into the stomach, locomote to a desired location, and perform surgical tasks, such as patch a wound, remove a foreign body, deliver drugs, and then biodegrade.

    Miyashita, S., Guitron, S., Yoshida, K., Li, S., Damian, D. D., and Rus, D. (2016) Ingestible, Controllable, and Degradable Origami Robot for Patching Stomach Wounds, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 909-916.

  3. Dynamical Coupling in Motor-Sensory Function Substitution
    In a prosthetic hand system, this research is about seeking efficient methods to send sensory information back to the body. Our endeavors consist in developing tactile sensing and display systems which exploit morphology as a mean to encode exteroceptive and proprioceptive stimuli, and relay enriched information to users of prosthetic hands.

    Dana D. Damian, Taylor Newton, Rolf Pfeifer, and Allison M. Okamura (2015) Artificial tactile sensing of position and slip speed by exploiting geometrical features, IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics, 20:1, pp. 263-274 (10.1109/TMECH.2014.2321680)

  4. Soft highly-stretchable sensors
    Soft-matter sensors and electronics have the potential to revolutionize medical robotics, wearable computing, and other application domains that require safe human-machine interaction or mechanical compatibility with natural human tissue and motion. An example of this technology is a capacitive liquid-based (eutectic gallium indium) conductive elastomer that senses pressure and shear.

    Dana D. Damian, Peter Roberts (co-first author), Wanliang Shan, Tong Lu, and Carmel Majidi (2013) Soft-Matter Capacitive Sensor for Measuring Shear and Pressure Deformation, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 3514-3519

Members
  1. Dana Damian

    Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor), Ph.D: University of Zurich, Postdoc: Harvard
  2. Eduardo Perez Guagnelli (Ph.D.)
  3. Flavien Lefevre (ESEO, Intern)
  4. Mohamed Atwya (MEng)
  5. Ghibson Hudson (MEng)
  6. YanQiang Liu (Visiting Assistant Professor, Beihang University, China)
Previous students:
Sarunas Nejus (University of Sheffield), Lilyan Leblanc (Telecom Physique Strasbourg, France), Xiaofan Wu (University of Sheffield), Emily L Ingham (University of Sheffield), Raymond Turyamureeba (University of Sheffield), Iyakorn Jarupraween (University of Sheffield), Odochi Onwubiko (University of Sheffield), Saheela Mohammed (University of Sheffield), Dorukhan Afacan (University of Sheffield), Can Kavak (Izmir Institute Of Technology), Anne-Marie T Nnaedozie (University of Sheffield), Alexander Thorn (University of Sheffield), Nikita Waghani (MIT, USA), Evelyn Huang (Boston University Academy, USA), Federico Fries (Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland), Maurice Goldi (University of Zurich, Switzerland), Taylor Newton (Stanford University, USA), Marvin Ludersdorfer (University of Applied Sciences, Duggendorf, Germany), Marco Fischer (University of Zurich, Switzerland), William PoTing Huang (NTNU, Taipei, Taiwan), Simon Feuerstein (University of Zurich, Switzerland), Matthias Boeller (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), Dominique Cadosch (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), Michael Ammann (University of Zurich, Switzerland), Markus Cadonau (University of Zurich, Switzerland)

Publications (selected)
  1. Dana D. Damian, Marco Fischer, Alejandro Hernandez-Arieta, and Rolf Pfeifer (2017) Force and Slip Feedback Guidance Role in Grasp Intensity and Time Response, Advanced Robotics (in press)
  2. Pete Shull and Dana D. Damian (2015) Haptic Wearables as Sensory Replacement, Sensory Augmentation and Trainer for Sensory Impairments – A Review, J. of Neuroeng and Rehab, 12:59
  3. Dana D. Damian, Taylor Newton, Rolf Pfeifer, and Allison M. Okamura (2015) Artificial tactile sensing of position and slip speed by exploiting geometrical features, IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics, 20:1, pp. 263-274 (10.1109/TMECH.2014.2321680)
  4. Dana D. Damian, Shuhei Miyashita, Atsushi Aoyama, Dominique Cadosch, William PoTing, Michael Ammann, and Rolf Pfeifer (2014) Automated Physiological Recovery of Avocado Plants for Plant-based Adaptive Machines, Adaptive Behavior, 22:2, pp. 109-122
  5. Dana D. Damian, Alejandro Hernandez Arieta, Harold Roberto Martinez Salazar and Rolf Pfeifer (2012) Slip Speed Feedback for Grip Force Control, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 59:8, pp. 2200 - 2210
  6. Alexander Thorn, Dorukhan Afacan (first co-author), Emily Ingham, Can Kavak, Shuhei Miyashita, Dana D. Damian (2017) Stretchable actuators with varying stiffness, 2017 Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS) Conference, Springer LNCS Vol.10454, pp. 343-355
  7. Shuhei Miyashita, Steven Guitron, Kazuhiro Yoshida, Shuguang Li, Dana D. Damian, and Daniela Rus (2016) Ingestible, Controllable, and Degradable Origami Robot for Patching Stomach Wounds, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 909-916
  8. Federico Fries, Shuhei Miyashita, Daniela Rus, Rolf Pfeifer and Dana D. Damian (2014) Electromagnetically Driven Elastic Actuator, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, pp. 309-314
  9. Dana D. Damian, Slava Arabagi, Assunta Fabozzo, Peter Ngo, Russell Jennings, Michael Manfredi, and Pierre E. Dupont (2014) Robotic Implant to Apply Tissue Traction Forces in the Treatment of Esophageal Atresia, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA),
  10. Dana D. Damian, Peter Roberts (co-first author), Wanliang Shan, Tong Lu, and Carmel Majidi (2013) Soft-Matter Capacitive Sensor for Measuring Shear and Pressure Deformation, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 3514-3519
  11. Dana D. Damian, Marvin Ludersdorfer, Yeongmi Kim, Alejandro Hernandez Arieta, Rolf Pfeifer and Allison Okamura (2012) Wearable Haptic Device for Cutaneous Force and Slip Feedback, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
  12. Dana D. Damian, Alejandro Hernandez Arieta and Allison M. Okamura (2011) Design and Evaluation of a Multi-Modal Haptic Skin Stimulation Apparatus, International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), pp 3455-3458
  13. Dana D. Damian, Harold Martinez, Konstantinos Dermitzakis, Alejandro Hernandez Arieta and Rolf Pfeifer (2010) Artificial Ridged Skin for Slippage Speed Detection in Prosthetic Hand Applications, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 904-909

Media The Telegraph (2018), Science Friday (2018), New Scientist (2018), Wired (2018), Discover Magazine (2018), Daily Mail (2018), MIT news (2017, 2015), MIT top page (2017, 2015), CNN (2015), Boston Globe (2015), and many others.

Contact Dana Damian
Biomedical Robotics Lab., Automatic Control and System Engineering Dept., University of Sheffield
Centre of Assistive Technology and Connected Healthcare
E: d.damian at sheffield.ac.uk | P: +44 (0)114 222 5632