Nitsan Davidor, who presented her PhD work at the Hamlyn Symposium on Surgical Robotics in London, UK last month, won the Best Demo Award at the workshop on "How to train the robotic surgeon of the future". Nitsan presented a podium talk at the conference and a demo at the workshop. In her demo, Nitsan showed her innovative bimanual robotic simulator for training epidural needle insertion skills. She highlighted the importance and experience of using both hands in the training -- one for probing and one for needle insertion -- just like the actual procedure. At the oral presentation, she discussed the probing and needle insertion strategies that she extracted from studying the interaction of users with the simulator. She won the Best Demo award ex aequo with Oxford Robotics Institute and University of Pisa.
![]()
Nitsan developed this simulator as part of a Research and Development project funded by ABC Robotics and a collaborative grant between Klalit and BGU, in collaboration with Dr. Yair Binyamin, who is also Nitsan's co-adviser in her PhD work, and Dr. Tamar Hayuni, both from Soroka Medical Center. The theme of the Hamlyn Symposium this year was Immersive Tech: The Future of Medicine. This annual symposium is the highlight event of the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, at Imperial College London. It provides a forum for international surgeons and engineers to network and share the latest developments in medical robotics, attracting world-leading scientists, engineers and clinical practitioners from a wide range of disciplines associated with medical robotics and surgery.
