Valentina Larocca

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About

Valentina Larocca is a pioneering surgical roboticist whose work centers on advancing telesurgery and minimally invasive thoracic procedures. Her major contributions lie in the preclinical validation of the TELELAP ALF-X system, a novel robotic platform distinguished by two groundbreaking features: integrated tactile perception, which restores the haptic feedback lost in conventional robotic surgery, and an eye-tracking camera control system. Through rigorous experimental studies on ovine models, Larocca demonstrated the system's feasibility for complex operations, including the first reported robotic pulmonary lobectomy and mediastinal lymph node dissection using this device. Her foundational 2014 paper, with 15 citations, established the safety and efficacy of the system for major thoracic procedures, while her subsequent work on anatomical lung resection (9 citations) further proved its surgical precision. By proving that a robotic system could replicate the tactile feedback of traditional thoracoscopy while enabling remote operation, Larocca has helped bridge the gap between open surgery and telerobotics. Her research remains a critical reference for engineers and surgeons developing next-generation haptic-enabled surgical platforms, laying the groundwork for more intuitive and safer robotic-assisted interventions.