About this Research Topic
With this Research Topic, we would like to generate a collection of state-of-the-art research that showcase various multidisciplinary approaches for taking on the challenges of developing medical robots for real-world application. Considering medical robots as medical devices, and while the research methods may vary on a case-by-case basis, the overall research approach shall follow an evidence-based, step-by-step transition from "clinical need" to "clinical requirements", "engineering requirement", "design", "verification", and finally "validation." A similar approach is mandated and expected by regulatory bodies around the world; therefore, it is imperative to familiarize the next generation of researchers with this research approach for real-world medical robot design examples.
The Robot Design Section of Frontiers in Robotics and AI is pleased to invite submissions for a Research Topic on "Medical Robots: From the clinical need to validation."
We welcome original research articles, reviews, and perspectives that contribute wholly or partially to the design of medical robots as medical devices. Within this theme, the submissions are encouraged, but not limited to address:
1. Identification of clinical needs and requirements for medical robots: surveys or original research on identification and justification of clinical requirements for various applications based on clinical evidence, standards, rationale, and experts' opinion,
2. Engineering and computational designs for clinical needs, including structural design and modelling, material selection and synthesis, actuation modalities, sensing principles and sensor-free estimators, control systems, decision-making and artificial intelligence,
3. Design of risk-aware robots and incorporation of risk-awareness as risk control strategies for medical robots
4. Design of validation studies for medical robots
5. Ethical and regulatory considerations for medical robots, especially in conjunction with the development and use of artificial intelligence in medical robots
6. clinical evaluation of medical robots, performance assessment of medical robots, clinical adoption of medical robots, and challenges and future directions in medical robotics
We welcome submissions from researchers, clinicians, engineers, industrialists, and policymakers working in the field of medical robotics. Manuscripts should be structured to reflect the researchers' approach to addressing a clinical need through robotic solutions and how they benchmarked the proposed solutions against the requirements (i.e., validation).
Keywords: Medical robot, Rehabilitation, Surgical robot, Intervention, Clinical need, Verification and Validation, Design
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.