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The laboratory for Surgical Planning and Robotic Cognition (SPARC) at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), led by Prof. Dr. Franziska Mathis-Ullrich, investigates cognition guided robots for surgical assistance in minimally invasive procedures, intelligent and flexible surgical instruments, and intuitive interfaces between humans and robots in the operating room.
The SPARC laboratory conducts interdisciplinary research in close collaboration with national and international partners. We aim to contribute to building a healthcare system that enables optimal and personalized treatment of patients through targeted interactions between surgical experts and the next generation of minimally invasive surgical robots and assistance systems.
On July 10th 2025, SPARC member Lennart Karstensen successfully defended his doctoral thesis on “Simulation-based Control Learning for Patient-Specific Autonomous Navigation for Endovascular Interventions in the Real World”. The examination committee consisted of Prof. Franziska Mathis-Ullrich (FAU)...
SPARC member Pit Henrich was awarded first place for his presentation at AIBEConf, held at the Digital Health Innovation Platform (d.hip) in Erlangen. His research focuses on advancing robotic interaction with deformable tissue and objects (a critical challenge in surgical robotics) by providing str...
We are pleased to share that our paper, “LUDO: Low-Latency Understanding of Deformable Objects using Point Cloud Occupancy Functions,” has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.
In this work, we present LUDO, a method for low-latency understanding of deformable object...
A new research project coordinated by Prof. Dr. Franziska Mathis-Ullrich aims to harness artificial intelligence to support the early detection of endometriosis using ultrasound imaging. The interdisciplinary team is developing machine learning models that can automatically identify subtle patterns ...
We are pleased to announce the publication of our latest paper, “NeuroLens: Organ Localization Using Natural Language Commands for Anatomical Recognition in Surgical Training,” in the International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery.
In this work, we present NeuroLens, a system th...
