University of Pisa is coordinator of this Spoke, led by Prof. Vincenzo Ferrari and his research team, which has been working on computer-assisted surgery since 2006.
Prof. Ferrari’s group, as the other UNIPI research groups involved in the project (Prof. Matteo Bianchi’s group, Prof. Lucia Pallottino’s group, and Prof. Paolo Salaris’s group), are all part of the Department of Information Engineering (DII).
The DII is an Excellence Center for Research and Higher Education in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Robotics and Bioengineering.
95 professors and 50 post-doc are members of the Department. The main research fields include Electronics, Applied Electromagnetism, Communication Systems, Information Engineering, Automation and Robotics and Biomedical Engineering.
DII has promoted six spin-off projects, and it cooperates with private and public institutions to provide innovative solutions to key issues in different ICT sectors, and to bridge the gap between academic and industrial research. The Department is involved in about 20 European projects (49 in the last three years), 2 ERC, 25 Regional Projects.
It runs an intense activity in Higher Education for about 4000 students and 200 PhD students, it organizes the Master in Cyber-security and the Summer Schools “Open medical device design” and “Enabling Technologies for the Internet of Things“.
In 2018 DII was selected by the Italian Minister of Education as “Department of Excellence” with the project CrossLab, aiming to support tre revolution of Industry 4.0 in Italy by creating interdisciplinary research labs open to big, medium and small-sized enterprises.
In 2023 DII was confirmed as Department of Excellence by the Italian Ministery of Education with the FoReLab project, which aims to develop technologies and methodologies for paving the way to a new generation of industry, autonomous, sustainable, resilient and person-centered.
MEDEA is a spin-off company of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna – Pisa founded in 1997.
For 25 years it has been working to promote the adoption of innovation in the healthcare services through the provision of high value-added services:
- Value-based Innovation Managment: innovation managment for supporting replication and scaling up actions based on value evidence for different stakeholders.
- Impact Assessment: generation of value evidence for the impact evaluation of an innovative service.
- Impact Assurance: maximizing impact and promotind good innovation practices to policy markers and citizens.
- Project Managment: managment of innovation projects in healthcare.
Orthokey is a young company founded in 2005 in Florence, Italy, by people working for 30 years of experience in Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery. We have spent more than 15 years setting the pace for innovation in healthcare technology. We design, manufacture and promote digital surgery systems for Orthopedic surgery. Focused in lower limb prosthetic, our efforts are constant and the commitment to orthopedic activity and the evolution of fast and simple digital devices are at the heart of the entire company. In the design phases of our solutions, at Orthokey, we follow three simple but fundamental goals: our systems have to be fast, simple and accurate. This ensures high level solutions with short learning curves and surgeons’ satisfaction.
Orthokey is ISO 13485 certified since year 2007 and the Orthokey quality unit is committed to grant best Service and Quality. The Procedures of the Quality Management System are constantly applied in each phase of the product design, production, sale and after sales. All our products meet the European Norms’ regulations on specific and general safety rules for every use, and they all bear the CE mark. We are also FDA approved and registered for commercialization in USA.
Our portfolio includes:
PERSEUS smart cuttng guide for TKA: Giroscopic powered cuttng guide connected to iPad that allows to perform femoral distal cut and tibial cut with high precision and less morbidity.
KiRA kinematic rapid assessment for ACL: a unique CE marked product on the market able to quantify ACL instability and post operative recovery pathway.
BLU-IGS navigation system: is the unique open platform for Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery available on the market. Compliant to Total Knee Arthoplasty, Hip Arthroplasty, Unicondylar Knee Arthroplasty, High Tibial Osteotomy, and Total Knee Revision.
ROBIN robotic system: open platform robotic system for Total Knee Arthroplasty.
We distribute in the main European countries as well as Australia, USA, Latin America and Asia. Our philosophy is to integrate the products portfolio of our partners with effective added value, smart solutions, providing quality-after-sale service and fast-time-to-market innovative solutions.
qbrobotics is an innovative SME, a leading manufacturer of anthropomorphic robotic hands, gripping devices and modular actuators implementing soft-robotics technology.
qbrobotics promotes innovative solutions in multiple sectors, achieving a worldwide presence in the robotics market.
The team can boast a high-level CV and top background in their field with solid primary background in robotics. Each business process is implemented in-house: from research, development and testing to hardware design and software programming to the production and assembly process.
qbrobotics also created its own robotics laboratory – qblab – where the testing phase is carried out and where the new product lines are developed. The company has now different research business units that are divided considering the peculiarity of the destination market.
Industrial Robotics & Automation
qbrobotics started an industrial business unitin 2018 to propose industrialized versions of the qb SoftHand to users that currently employ collaborative robots in their production and testing lines. The same breakthrough advantages of the qb SoftHand have obvious applications in the domain of automatic industrial manipulation.
To better meet the needs of industrial operators, qbrobotics has developed the qb SoftHand Industry, the first hand certified by TUV SUD as a collaborative device.
The application of soft-robotics in industry is generating a new line of application allowing the development of innovative and intrinsically safe gripping systems in human-machine interaction, thus allowing a natural placement of this generation of grippers in collaborative robotics. A further goal will be the integration of gripping systems for tele-operation applications capable of working hostile environments to guarantee human safety.
Service robotics
qbrobotics also provides robotic hands for private companies and high-tech robotics laboratories producing and commercializing humanoid robots. Today humanoids have a limited liability unable of physical interaction either with the environment either human. Based on Variable Stiffness (VS) and soft robotics motion technologies, qbrobotics works on designing humanoid robots able to safe interact with humans and perform operative tasks on unstructured, inaccessible, and potentially dangerous environments. qbrobotics cooperate with its partners for designing sensorimotor interfaces aim to telepresence applications performed by soft anthropomorphic robotic avatars.
Biomedical & Prosthetics
qbrobotics produces an anthropomorphic artificial hand for prosthetic and rehabilitation applications by research institutes. qbrobotics designed and produces the qb SoftHand a new generation robotic hand, which overperforms the current state of art in terms of robustness, naturalness of motion, control simplicity, versatility and price. Its application in the rehabilitation of upper limb amputees is currently being tested in several Rehabilitation and Medical Institutes around the world, especially in the United States, where a large set of experimental sessions is currently on-going, exploring the use of the hand alone and in combination with purposefully designed wearable feedback devices.
The company is based in Tuscany in the Robotics Cluster of Pisa and thanks to the achieved internationalization, it’s able to internationally operate by direct export in 25+ countries and with a distribution network of 24 partners in 4 continents.
