Acknowledgements: Doctoral student Eleonora Storto was awarded the Best Student Paper Award at the I RIM national conference for her innovative study on tele echography, used[...]

Acknowledgements: Doctoral student Eleonora Storto was awarded the Best Student Paper Award at the I-RIM national conference for her innovative study on tele-echography, used for the first time under realistic conditions

Recognition for Eleonora Storto, a PhD student of the PhD course in Emerging Digital Technologies of the Sant'Anna School, who won the Best Student Paper Award at the Italian Conference on Robotics and Intelligent Machines. The scientific event was attended by more than 500 registered participants and reached its sixth edition, as part of I-RIM 3D, three days of initiatives organised by the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, to promote the development and use of these technologies in improving the quality of life, the wellbeing of citizens and in general the conditions of society. It is with this objective in mind that the prize-winning work, entitled 'Evaluation of a Bilateral Tele-Echographic Architecture in Presence of Time Delay', was created. It analyses force-feedback tele-ecography in order to improve the remote performance of ultrasound examination by exploiting a robotic solution to optimize its performance and alleviate the physician's workload.

The study was developed as part of the project dedicated to telemedicine in the Proximity Care programme, carried out by the Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Health Science of the Sant'Anna School with funding from the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca and the collaboration of the Regione Toscana, Asl Toscana Nord Ovest, Fondazione Monasterio. The project is aimed at improving access to healthcare services of excellence for the population of inland areas.

The current tele-echographs are not tested under realistic conditions and neglect the presence of time delay, a factor that destabilizes the system but is present in authentic execution scenarios. In addition, these systems do not take into account reproducing contact forces in relation to the specific requirements of ultrasound.

The authors of the study with the participation of Eleonora Storto, for the first time, focused on the performance of a tele-ecography architecture, testing it under realistic working conditions, using robotic systems that took into account the presence of a time delay and the contact forces required by ultrasound.

Eleonora Storto is a PhD student at the Institute of Mechanical Intelligence and a research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Healt Sciences at the Sant'Anna School. The study she presented at the conference is the result of the work of a team from the Institute of Mechanical Intelligence of the Sant'Anna School, consisting of Eleonora Stordo herself, Francesco Porcini, researcher and scientific tutor of the doctoral student, Antonio Frisoli, supervisor of the doctoral student, Massimiliano Solazzi, lecturer in applied machine mechanics, and research fellows Valerio Novelli and Andrea Bini.

Cover photo: Eleonora Stordo during her presentation.