Russell
H. Taylor has
over 40 years of professional experience
in the fields of computer science, robotics, and computer-integrated
interventional medicine. He
received a
Bachelor of Engineering Science degree from Johns Hopkins University
in 1970
and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1976.
From 1976 to 1995, he was employed as a
Research Staff Member and manager at IBM's T.J. Watson Research
Center, with
the exception of two years spent helping establish a robot product
group in
IBM's Boca Raton, Florida facility and a sabbatical at the MIT
Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory. His
early work
at IBM focused primarily on robot programming systems, geometric task
analysis,
automation systems and technology for manufacturing applications.
In addition to his research activities, he
was the principal developer of the AML
robot programming language
and was the
system architect for the IBM 7565 robot
product.
Medical
Robotics Work at IBM: In
the late 1980’s Dr. Taylor became
interested in surgical applications of robotics and led research
activities in this area at IBM
Research until he
moved to
Johns Hopkins University in September 1995.
Briefly, this work included the development of the prototype of
what
became the “Robodoc” system for joint replacement surgery; development
of a
surgical planning and execution system for craniofacial osteotomies;
and a robotic
system (called “LARS”) for
minimally-invasive endoscopic surgery. Much of this work was
ground-breaking at the time. The
Robodoc
system was the first robotic assistant to be used in a major surgical
procedure. Key innovations included the use of CT images to plan the
procedure,
co-registration of the preoperative plan and robot to the patient in
the
operating room, and control of the robot to machine the desired shape
accurately and safely. Although now routine, each of these steps
required
significant innovation. The
craniofacial
surgery system (developed with Court Cutting, MD) was one of the first
uses of
surgical navigation for non-neurosurgical applications.
Similarly,
the
LARS system introduced many features and concepts that are now
commonplace
in medical robots. Among
the most
significant was the introduction of a “remote
center-of-motion” (RCM)
structure to provide a kinematically
constrained pivoting motion at the point where the endoscope or tool
enters the
patient’s body. The RCM provides high dexterity about the entry point
while
also simplifying other aspects of the system design and simplifying
safety
implementation. Other features introduced in the LARS systems include
a variety
of surgeon-robot interfaces, including voice interfaces, a novel
joystick
device that could be clipped to a surgeon’s tool, visual tracking of
surgical
tools, automated positioning of tools to targets designated by the
surgeon
saving and returning the endoscope to designated views, and “virtual
fixtures”
for enforcing safety barriers and for helping a surgeon position and
manipulate
surgical tools.
The
RCM
mechanism, together with its variants, has become ubiquitous in
medical robot
systems, both in academia and in commercial applications, ranging from
the
DaVinci surgical robots (over 4200 installed worldwide) to smaller
clinically
applied systems (such as separate ophthalmology robots developed by KU
Leuven
and by Preceyes, Inc.), and to many
research systems
for minimally invasive surgery, image-guided injections, and
microsurgery.
The
Robodoc
and LARS systems both provided a form of hand-over-hand “steady
hand” robot control,
in which the surgeon and robot both hold
the surgical tool and the robot moves to comply to forces exerted by
the
surgeon on the tool. Because
the robot
is doing the actual motions, the motion can be very precise and the
effects of
hand tremor are eliminated, and virtual fixtures are readily
incorporated into
the constrained optimization framework that Dr. Taylor developed for
control of
the LARS system. The
steady-hand
cooperative control paradigm has subsequently been applied to many
medical
robots both at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere.
Product examples include Stryker’s Mako® orthopaedic robots and
a novel
robot developed at Johns Hopkins for head-and-neck microsurgery that
is being
commercialized by a startup company, Galen Robotics, and the KU Leuven
system
mentioned above.
Academic
Career: Since
September 1995, Prof. Taylor has been a
Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, with joint
appointments in Mechanical Engineering, Surgery, and Radiology. In
2011, he was
named the first John C. Malone Professor in the Johns Hopkins Whiting
School of
Engineering in recognition of leadership and accomplishment in
multidisciplinary research. Currently,
he
is also the Director of the Laboratory
for Computational Sensing and
Robotics (LCSR)
and of the
(graduated) NSF Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated
Surgical
Systems and Technology (CISST ERC).
At
Johns
Hopkins, he has continued to make substantial contributions in all
aspects of medical robotics, including mechanism development, robot
systems and
control, image analysis and image guidance, human-machine interfaces,
and a
wide range of application areas, including orthopedics,
minimally-invasive
endoscopic surgery, image-guided needle placement, ophthalmology,
otology,
laryngology, sinus surgery, and radiation oncology.
In one recent count, he is listed as the sole author or
co-author of 155 journal articles, 342 refereed conference papers, 52
refereed abstracts in proceedings, 20 book chapters, 1 book, and 87
U.S. and international patents.
More information
about his research may be found on the research pages of his personal
web
site, on his “Computer-Integrated Interventional Systems” (CIIS)
personal lab site, and in his CV.
Professional
Service: Prof.
Taylor is Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the IEEE Transactions on
Robotics and Automation, and has served on numerous other
editorial boards for international journals, including his current
service as
an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging
and as the Editor for Surgical Robotics for the IEEE Transactions
on Medical Robotics and Biomedicine.
He has organized and co-chaired important
academic conferences in the area of medical robotics and
computer-assisted
surgery, and has served on many conference boards and program
committees. He has served
on numerous advisory boards and
review panels for the National Science Foundation and other US
Government
agencies, as well as for non-US Governments and organizations.
Currently he is
on External Advisory Boards for the Center for Image-Guided Innovation
and
Therapeutic Intervention at Toronto Children’s Hospital, the Institute
of
Image-Guided Minimally Invasive Hybrid Surgery at IHU Strasbourg, and
the Computer
Assisted Surgery Laboratory of Excellence in Grenoble, among others.
Awards
and Honors: In
1994, Dr. Taylor was elected to be a Fellow
of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers "for
contributions in the theory and implementation of programmable
sensor-based
robot systems and their application to surgery and manufacturing".
He is also a Fellow of the American
Institute on Biomedical Engineers (1998), a Fellow of the
Medical Image
Computing and Computer-Assisted Surgery (MICCAI) Society (2009),
a Fellow
of the Engineering School of the University of Tokyo (2010), and
a
Member and Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (2015,
2017). Dr. Taylor has
received numerous other awards
recognizing his technical accomplishments and leadership, including
four IBM
Outstanding Achievement Awards (1982, 1984, 1987, 1993), four IBM
Invention
Awards (1983,1991, 1992, 1994), an IBM Group Achievement
Award
(1991), the Maurice Müller Award (2000) for excellence and
leadership in
computer-assisted orthopaedic surgery, the IEEE Robotics and
Automation
Society Pioneer Award (2008) “for pioneering work in medical
robotics and
in the theory and practice of programmable automation systems”, the
MICCAI
Society Enduring Impact Award (2010), the IEEE Engineering
in Medicine
and Biology Technical Field Award “for
contributions
and leadership in the field of surgical robotics and
computer-integrated interventional systems” (2015), and the Honda
Prize
“for his tremendous contributions in the development of medical
robots,
technological evolution in this field, and producing highly skilled
technical
personnel” (2015). Dr.
Taylor was elected as a Member of The
National Academy of Engineering in 2020 “for contributions to the
development of medical robotics and computer-integrated systems.”