MnRI Partners with Medtronic for Remote Stroke Treatment Research

Dr. Andy Grande is a professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota who routinely treats and oversees stroke cases in the Twin Cities.  He turned to the College of Science and Engineering Minnesota Robotics Institute with a question:  “We can’t get our stroke patients transported to us fast enough…can you build an inexpensive robot so I can treat them remotely?”  This catalyzed a fast-growing partnership between Medtronic, the Minnesota Robotics Institute, UMN Mechanical Engineering, and UMN Computer Science and Engineering.  Prof. Tim Kowalewski, Mechanical Engineering, introduced this as part of his ME8284 Medical Robotics course, where students shadow surgeons in the operating room and observe surgical robots in action to identify the shortcomings of modern technology and opportunities to make better tools.  When MnRI hosted Medtronic for a campus visit with Dr. Grande, and students and faculty attended the session, momentum really picked up.  After the course ended, PhD  students Pin-Hao Cheng (Mechanical Engineering), Adam Imdieke (Computer Science), and Michael Feldkamp (Mechanical Engineering) attended surgeries with Dr. Grande, started a working group, and organized a student-led kick-off bringing nearly 30 students from across the college of science and engineering. 

“We want a farmer in rural settings to have the same breakthrough care as someone who lives near a world-class hospital,” says Prof. Tim Kowalewski “but making a working robot so affordable that any hospital can provide such care is truly an engineering challenge.  But that’s exactly the kind of feat that our motivated engineering students can pull off.” 

Two things were clear: the solution would have to be inexpensive enough for any hospital to buy but also smart enough to automate steps in the procedure to be medically practical.  Fortunately, recent advances in artificial intelligence with robotic perception and learning promise to enable breakthroughs in this regard.  Prof. Karthik Desingh of Computer Science and Engineering (and Adam Imdieke’s PhD advisor) specializes in this area, including Imitation Learning (IL), where models learn to master tasks by imitating expert demonstrations, and Reinforcement Learning (RL), which allows robots to explore complex tasks and discover effective strategies through trial and error. Prof. Desingh’s input bolstered early discussions about solutions that were pitched to MnRI and awarded as a seed grant in early 2025. 

This crucial support resulted in the UMN team visiting Medtronic in Boston to observe what the state of the art is in their internal existing work.  When combining both Medtronic’s forthcoming technology with the MN Robotics Institute’s capabilities, the team discovered a path to a promising solution.  This landed a formal Medtronic-UMN Partnership grant with Medtronic investing $250,000 to advance the project over two years. 

Last November UMN demonstrated its first working prototype: telerobotic control of a neurovascular guidewire via an iPhone—a crucial capability for remote stroke treatment.  The Medtronic team and their leadership came to UMN Campus to evaluate progress and learn about the project.  Linnea Burman (President, Medtronic NeuroVascular) and Adam Arthur, MD a neurosurgeon colleague of Dr. Grande and now Medtronic’s Chief Medical Officer for NeuroVascular experienced the first time Dr. Grande controlled guidewires robotically and remotely from an iPhone.  They were delighted by the progress and strongly encouraged the team to continue their efforts.  Since then, the team has grown to include more than 15 active students including undergraduate and graduates spanning multiple departments: MnRI, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering.  Four papers resulting from Master’s projects were accepted to the Design of Medical Devices conference in Minneapolis and will be presented in April.  The team is still actively recruiting additional graduate and undergraduate students from across engineering departments and MnRI. 

The joint University of Minnesota/Medtronic partnership was recently invited to submit a large proposal on the project to the Advanced Research Project Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to their Autonomous Interventions and Robotics program.  If awarded, this would make their telerobotic stroke treatment more autonomous and speed up its development for live testing in six years.