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About

Nicola Preda is a leading researcher in cognitive and autonomous robotic surgery, whose work bridges the gap between teleoperation and full machine autonomy in the operating room. His primary research areas include bilateral teleoperation, shared control architectures, and motion planning for multi-arm surgical robots. Preda’s most influential contribution is the introduction of an energy tank-based interactive control architecture for autonomous and teleoperated robotic surgery, which has garnered over 220 citations and laid the groundwork for safe, regulated autonomy in surgical systems. He further advanced the field by developing a cognitive robotic system capable of executing simple surgical tasks with minimal human intervention, a milestone that has earned 53 citations and demonstrated the feasibility of robot-led procedures. Preda’s work on passive virtual fixtures for dual-arm robots and his two-layer shared control approach have been instrumental in ensuring safety during transitions between autonomous and manual modes. His motion planning algorithms, which combine sampling-based methods with motion primitives, have enabled coordinated, collision-free actions in complex surgical environments. Through these contributions, Preda has established himself as a key architect of the next generation of semi-autonomous and autonomous surgical robots.