Eight sessions of the WRC have been held since 2015. Xu Guanghong, deputy director of science and innovation at the China Association for Science and Technology, said the conference has become a platform for scientific and technological exchange and industrial cooperation to promote the high-quality development of robotics and intelligent equipment.
The seven-day event also saw the release of the 2023 Report on China’s Robotics Technology and Industrial Development. The further application of robotics in areas such as new-energy vehicles, and surgery and power line inspection can support the country’s digital transformation and intelligent upgrading, according to the report.
The physical protector
At the exhibition, Cathbot (Shanghai) Robot Co. Ltd., a joint venture under Shanghai MicroPort MedBot (Group) Co. Ltd., a company focusing on providing intelligent surgery total solutions, presented their latest work—R-ONE® Vascular Interventional Surgical Robot.
Developed in 2019 by Robocath, headquartered in France, Cathbot’s R-ONE® represents the first robotic system designed to provide advanced surgical assistive technology, specifically to help interventional cardiologists implant stents (angioplasty). The robot received in February 2019 its European Conformity Certification, a confirmation that a product meets the health, safety and environmental requirements of the European Union, and is now used in hospitals across Europe and Africa.
In China, the R-ONE® recently completed the country’s first robot-assisted 5G ultra-remote percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), a procedure used to widen coronary arteries that are blocked or narrowed. On July 14, the operation was performed over a distance of 2,800 km courtesy of 5G network communication. Professor Chen Yundai of Beijing-based Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital remotely controlled the R-ONE® via a robotic control in an operating room in Beijing, and a team led by Professor Yang Yining, President of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region People’s Hospital, assisted on-site in Xinjiang. The entire procedure took only 20 minutes. Based on the results of the post-operative angiography follow-up, the patient was discharged on July 17.
In traditional PCI surgery, physicians wear a surgical lead apron throughout the procedure to protect themselves from X-rays. “Wearing such a lead apron for a long time can damage the skeletal system. Moreover, the apron does not cover the surgeon’s arms and brain, resulting in surgeon fatigue and even poor surgical quality. In the long run, PCI doctors are prone to occupational diseases such as spinal diseases and cataracts,” Lin Lei, a senior clinical marketing manager at Cathbot, who received her Ph.D in oncology from Peking University, told Beijing Review.
Using the panvascular interventional surgical robot, physicians can manipulate the catheter, guidewires and other equipment in the operating module. This also reduces radiation absorption and eliminates the burden of having to wear the heavy lead apron.
“Experiments have proven that robotic PCI surgery can reduce radiation by 97 percent. In addition, the robot’s first-of-its-kind ‘two-hands double-twisting mimic technology’ allows guidewires to move through blood vessels and complex lesions, giving physicians submillimeter-level control over precise catheter positioning and reducing the risk of complications,” Lin added.
The psychological monitor
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the concept of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), and the exhibition area of BCI systems at the conference attracted special attention. In the foreseeable future, human intelligence will be able to work in tandem with artificial intelligence.
A BCI creates a direct communication pathway between the brain’s electrical activity and an external device, usually a computer or robotic limb.
“As the name suggests, BCI refers to the direct connection between the brain and the computer. In other words, getting things done with the mind,” Gao Xiaorong, a professor of biomedical engineering at Tsinghua University, said. “Traditional human-computer interaction must involve muscle tissue, through the use of means such as keyboard, mouse or speech, otherwise communication is impossible. But a BCI can extract signals directly from the brain to control external devices, replacing, restoring, supplementing or even improving brain functions,” Gao elaborated. The combination of machine memory and computing power with the thinking and innovation of the human brain will create a new future of brain-machine collaboration.
At the WRC, a BCI research team from Tsinghua introduced their more “niche” research, namely, the combination of BCIs with psychology. According to Zhang Dan, an associate professor of psychology at Tsinghua, BCIs for psychological applications are mainly “passive BCIs.” These involve using individualized BCI signal analysis methods to evaluate individual mental states and psychological traits, making the evaluation more objective and accurate. Related methods and technologies have developed rapidly since 2010.
“Currently, the development level of BCI research in the field of psychological assessment in China and abroad is similar, and Chinese scholars have achieved solid results in the fields of emotion recognition (the process of identifying human emotion) and personality assessment (the measurement of personal characteristics) in recent years,” Zhang told Beijing Review.
Part of the school’s psychology department, Tsinghua’s BCI research team conducts psychological assessment research. But unlike most research groups, which are mainly active in biomedical engineering, computer science and other disciplines, the Tsinghua team is unique in its interdisciplinary integration of psychological theories, methods and BCI technology. “For example, it was the first in the world to conduct BCI research on positive emotion recognition based on the theory of positive psychology,” Zhang added.
An important issue in today’s world is the increasing prevalence of mental health problems. Currently, the screening and diagnosis of mental health problems rely on psychiatrists, psychological counselors and other mental health professionals interviewing patients, which is costly in terms of time and labor. It’s difficult to meet the rapidly growing demand for mental health services. “This challenge is particularly pronounced in China because the psychological industry started relatively late here,” Zhang said.
“The gap between the limited number of professionals and the large demand for services can be bridged by applying BCI technology to provide intelligent and automated objective mental health assessments,” he added. At the same time, BCI’s fine analysis of brain signals can also guide follow-up intervention to improve a patient’s mental health status, promoting the closed loop from assessment to treatment. “Therefore, ‘BCI plus psychology’ can provide important scientific and technological support for building China’s mental health services and for developing the global mental health service industry,” Zhang concluded. –The Daily Mail-Beijing Review news exchange item
