Dr. William C. Nowlin is Senior Director of Research and Applied System Development at Intuitive Surgical, where he leads the team responsible for researching advanced concepts and developing and testing all product software, control algorithms, and safety algorithms. Dr. Nowlin joined Intuitive in 1996, and in the early years helped develop the early control and software architecture, and was a member of the team that defined the operational parameters of a new telesurgical robot. Prior to that, Dr. Nowlin was a member of the technical staff at SRI International, contributing to foundation technology for a battlefield telesurgery platform, and developing technologies for active noise and vibration cancellation in highly complex systems and environments.
Dr. Nowlin holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University, where he was a member of the Robotics Lab studying tactile sensing. He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen US and various international patents and several papers.
Intuitive Surgical makes the daVinci(tm) Surgical System, which is variously described as a "robot", a "telesurgical system", and a "mechanism for minimally invasive surgery". In this presentation, I'll give a general introduction to the device and how surgery is accomplished using it. I'll talk a little about the business of robotic surgery. I'll try to give some historical background to credit those on whose shoulders we stand, and describe the fundamental technological elements (what's neat about it). Next I'll discuss the technical and business challenges, and I'll do my best to describe where I see the technology going in the next few years.
I promise plenty of pictures, videos, and I hope to bring some hardware to let you explore. The talk can be very interactive, and I am happy to veer off in a direction determined by the group.
