2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Medical robotics is a fast-evolving field that demands engineers with expertise in control, sensing, and human–robot interaction in safety-critical clinical contexts. To prepare students for these challenges, we developed a new graduate course that combines lectures, student-led discussions of current research, hands-on experiential laboratory sequence, and a student-chosen final project. This paper describes the design and evaluation of these labs, which guide students from manual surgical skills to robot-assisted and haptically-controlled procedures. Through the semester, students have lab topics around: (1) suturing on simulated tissue pads, (2) laparoscopic and robotic surgery using Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery trainers and the Da Vinci Surgical System simulator, (3) robotic medical teleoperation on a custom low-cost 1-DoF bilateral system, and (4) virtual fixtures and haptics using a 6-DoF force-feedback device to design and program constraints that guide a tool’s motion in simulated surgical tasks. We assessed learning outcomes through pre- and post-lab surveys and reflective reports. Results indicate that the majority of students developed deeper understanding and greater confidence in both technical implementation and surgical task analysis. By releasing the lab hardware and software as open-source resources, this course offers a practical and adaptable framework for experiential medical robotics education that connects foundational theory to authentic clinical applications.