Papers
19
Total Citations
483
H-Index
13
About
Stephen Tully is a versatile robotics and surgical engineering researcher whose work bridges autonomous mobile robotics and cutting-edge minimally invasive surgical systems. He has made significant contributions across two interconnected domains: probabilistic localization and mapping for mobile robots, and image-guided flexible surgical robotics. In the field of autonomous systems, Tully developed sophisticated Bayesian filtering frameworks for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), including bearing-only approaches and hybrid metric/topological representations, with his iterated filter and hierarchical atlas works drawing over 50 combined citations. His leap-frog cooperative localization strategy further advanced multi-robot coordination. Tully's surgical robotics contributions have been particularly impactful. His work on highly articulated snake robots for transoral and minimally invasive surgery — integrating extended Kalman filtering for real-time shape estimation and registration — helped lay the groundwork for next-generation surgical platforms. His involvement in demonstrating the Medrobotics Flex System in cadaveric studies (79 citations) and transoral robotic surgery research (80 citations) reflects direct translational impact in head and neck oncology, where improving patient quality of life drives innovation. His novel CARE algorithm further showcased his ability to adapt robotics principles creatively for clinical environments.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1A transoral highly flexible robot80 citations · 2012
- 2
- 3Leap-Frog Path Design for Multi-Robot Cooperative Localization50 citations · 2010
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- 5Iterated filters for bearing-only SLAM32 citations · 2008
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- 8Hybrid localization using the hierarchical atlas22 citations · 2007
- 9Simultaneous Compliance and Registration Estimation for Robotic Surgery16 citations · 2014
- 10