Professor Damien Chablat
Endoscopic surgery of the ear and sinuses offers the advantage of minimally invasive pathways and visualization of challenging areas. However, it poses challenges as it immobilizes one hand of the surgeon for endoscope stabilization. As part of Mr. Guillaume Michel’s doctoral thesis, an assisting robot was specifically developed for this type of endoscopic surgery under the guidance of Dr. Chablat from LS2N and Professor Bordure from CHU Nantes, with the assistance of Dr. Salunkhe from LS2N.
To conduct this study, a preliminary analysis of the anatomical regions of the ear and sinuses was carried out. A geometric atlas, based on scans, defined the dimensions of robotic workspaces and their variations, guiding the development of specifications for robot design. After reviewing existing robots dedicated to ear and sinus surgery, a new endoscope-carrying robot architecture was proposed, accompanied by functional analysis. Concurrently, a patent watch was conducted before filing a new patent in 2021. A market study was also conducted, revealing the interest of users in the relevant specialties.
An analysis of different architectures aimed at creating a mechanism with a displaced rotation center led to the design of a spherical mechanism with 2 DOFs coupled with a double parallelogram. A new optimization algorithm, based on the Nelder Mead algorithm, was developed to optimize parallel mechanisms. The control modalities of the robot through image tracking were defined using an algorithm employing CamShift, thereby freeing the surgeon’s two hands and simplifying endoscope movements.
Prof. Damien Chablat has obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nantes/Ecole Centrale de Nantes, France, in 1998. After finishing his PhD, dr. Chablat has worked for one year at the famous Centre for Intelligent Machines within the McGill University, Canada with Prof. Jorge Angeles. He came back to France and started to work at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in 1999. He became CNRS senior researcher in 2011 and works now in the ROMAS team (Robots and Machines for Manufacturing, Society and Services) at Laboratoire des Sciences du Numérique de Nantes as the Team Manager. Two important milestones in Damien Chablat’s career had leu in 2023: the first in February 2023 when he assumed the role of head of robotics action at the National Research Agency (ANR) and the second when he becomes scientific manager of the European project Ethena with the University of Cluj Napoca in Romania.
His research interests include robotics, design of parallel manipulators and human fatigue evaluation for industrial tasks. Under his supervision, 22 PhD degrees have been awarded, while and he is currently leading other 5 PhD students within four different research projects. As an evidence of his exceptional research career, Damien Chablat is in the Stanford University Names World’s Top 2%.
Prof. Chablat has managed and has been involved in numerous research projects, among which: European projects: EnHance, Next Generation of Production Systems, Angels; French National Research Agency Projects: SiRoPa, Raamo, AviNeck, LobbyBot, Ecarp, StartMesh; IRT projects: PIVIPP, FAST, ASPEN, Cobot++, Mascot, Cobolege, and French Companies: Airbus, Tecnomatix, Aldebaran, Thales, Safran, ArmorMeca, Orthopus, Weez-U Welding and CETIM. His areas of excellence are the modelling and innovative design of parallel robots, workspace and singularity analysis, optimal design, stiffness analysis, kinematics, virtual reality, muscle activity, development of manipulative and locomotive robots, dynamic control, and perception.
Prof. Chablat is highly visible on the national level and actively contributes to the international scientific community via his presence in the editorial boards of A-rank journals (IFToMM Mechanism and Machine Theory, ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics).
Damien Chablat has published over 300 papers, with more than 70 in high-ranking journals (Machine and Mechanism Theory, Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, Journal of Mechanical Design, etc.), out of which 34 papers in Q1, and 15 in Q2. He also has over 8200 citations, and an H-index of 44 (Google Scholar) and 30 (Scopus).