Bulletin No. 2, 2024

Mechanical and Automation Engineering Professor Samuel Au Kwok-wai has been passionate about robotics since childhood, and is particularly fascinated by moveable structures. In 2019, he established Cornerstone Robotics, a local unicorn startup that works to realise his dream of benefiting patients with surgical robots. To maximise his research’s impact, he submitted a project proposal to the steering committee of the RAISe+ Scheme this year. The project, an Accessible Surgical Robotic System, aims to incubate a safe, affordable, effective surgical robotic platform for better patient care in Hong Kong, the mainland and the rest of the world. Professor Au is a founding team member of the da Vinci Single-Site surgical platform and the da Vinci ION platform, and has spent almost two decades in the medical robotics industry. Talking about his participation in the RAISe+ Scheme, he says: “Funding from the government provides great support for our project, helping us bring high-quality robotic surgical platforms from Hong Kong to the world.” Professor Au also leads a team of top-notch experts at Cornerstone Robotics, who invented the Sentire Endoscopic Surgical System, the most complicated such platform developed in Hong Kong. This multi-port laparoscopic surgical robot is able to perform a 540-degree spatial rotation, which allows surgeons to overcome physical limitations. Surgical procedures can be performed in a safer, more efficient, standardised manner. “The endoscope Professor Au’s demonstration on the surgical robot 7