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Congratulations for Colette Abah and Andrew Orekhov for having their paper accepted and presented at IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation 2018 held in Brisbane Australia. 

 

Congratulations to Nicolo Garbin of STORM lab and Long Wang of ARMA lab for winning ISMR2018 best student paper (IEEE International Symposium on Medical Robotics). The award was given for the paper titled "A Disposable Continuum Endoscope Using Piston-driven Parallel Bellow Actuator" by Nicolo Garbin, Long Wang, James H. Chandler, Nabil Simaan, Keith L. Obstein and Pietro Valdastri.  

 

ARMA members congratulate Aditya Bhowmick for his new job as a software engineer at Think Surgical in Freemont CA. Aditya will be helping develop the next generation of surgical robotics for orthopedics. 
Congratulations Aditya :-)

 

Congratulations for Rashid Yasin, Long Wang and Colette Abah for having their paper titled "Using Continuum Robots for Force-Controlled Semi Autonomous Organ Exploration and Registration" nominated for best conference paper at the IEEE International Symposium on Medical Robotics. 

 

 

Aditya Bhomwick has successfully defended his Masters thesis on June 20 2014. His Master's thesis is titled "User-Specified Virtual Fixtures for Augmenting Human-Robot Interaction User-Specified Virtual Fixtures". His thesis presents a culmination of work on high-level control allowing users to specify virtual fixture geometry in both cooperative manipulation and in telemanipulated robots.  Congratulations to Aditya for a job well done. Vidoes of demonstrations of some of his work can bee seen at this link.

ARMA recieved a new 4-year integrative award from the National Science Foundation as part of the National Robotics Initiative. This award titled "NRI: INT: MANUFACTURING USA: COLLAB: In-Situ Collaborative Robotics in Confined Spaces" in a collaborative award with the Biorobotics lab of Dr. Howie Choset at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. The following summary listed below is the same as in is the public summary page. We will be updating a new project page with research outcomes as results mature in the coming years.

Many manufacturing operations require workers to perform operations in confined spaces, subjecting them to possible fatigue and injury from performing tedious tasks in non-ergonomic postures. Intelligent robotic assistants can facilitate safe and ergonomic reach into such spaces, while allowing human workers to remain physically present and in full control over delicate operations. The project will investigate the use of highly reconfigurable, in-situ, collaborative robots (ISCRs) with the enhanced perception and support-autonomy needed to allow a worker and a robot to safely share a common space and collaborate through physical interaction. Conventional robots cannot be used as ISCRs because they are bulky, special-purpose and difficult to program. This project's ISCRs are expected to reduce worker fatigue and musculoskeletal injuries, which are responsible for more than 34 percent of lost work days in the United States, and increase worker productivity. Their added intelligence is also expected to make the robots easier to use, by offering a human-friendly means of interaction. The research has potential applications in the aerospace industry, including the manufacture and service of the fuselage and wings, inspection and repair of hydraulic lines or fuel tanks and pipes, caulking, welding of structural joints and deburring.

This work to support effective human-robot collaboration in confined spaces makes three main technical contributions: 1) design and control strategies for ISCRs, 2) contact detection and location estimation and 3) simultaneous contact-force and navigation (SCAN) planning, so that a robot can use bracing to maneuver deep into a confined space. The ISCRs allow compliance and robustness to geometric uncertainty, reduced inertia, contact sensing and regulated force of interaction with the environment. This new design enables the exploration of real-time estimation for contact state detection, a screw-theoretic approach for constraint identification, and stiffness modeling. The research will also develop planners to achieve SCAN within a semi-structured environment with uncertainty and will use intentional contact to allow enable the robot to reach deep into confined spaces.


Dr. Rajarshi Roy joined ARMA lab. Rajarshi is a former Ph.D. student of Dr. Jaydev Desai and a member of the Robotics Automation and Medical Systems (RAMS) Laboratory. His research in the past five years has focused on mechanical characterization of tissue properties at the micro-scale and semi-automation of tissue hystology using atomic force microscopy. His research culminated in a dissertation titled Mechanical Characterization of Normal and Cancerous Breast Tissue Specimens Using Atomic Force Microscopy.

 

Rajarshi is joining the National Robotics Initiative research project titled Complementary Situational Awareness for Human-Robot Partnerships. We are thrilled that he has chosen to join our team and we look forward to his contributions to several research efforts at ARMA.

Congratulations to Nima Sarli and Giuseppe delguidice for having their papers submitted to IROS2017 accepted for publications. They will soon present their work in Vancouver Canada. The paper titles and authors are:

  1. Minimal Visual Occlusion Redundancy Resolution of Continuum Robots in Confined Spaces by Nima Sarli and Nabil Simaan
  2. Continuum Robots for Multi-Scale Motion: Micro-Scale Motion Through Equilibrium Modulation by Giuseppe delgiudice, Long Wang and Nabil Simaan.

 

ARMA was awarded a new grant titled NRI Large: Collaborative Research: Complementary Situational Awareness for Human-Robot Partnerships. The award funds a 5-year collaborative effort between our lab and Dr. Howie Choset at Carnegine Mellon University and Dr. Russell H. Taylor at Johns Hopkins University. See the following page for details on this interdesciplinary resesarch project.

Congratulations to the NRI collabnorative student team from Vanderbilt, CMU and JHU. The following papers have been accepted for publication in the upcoming IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA' 2016) in Stockholm, Sweden:

  1. Roy, R., Wang, L., Simaan, N., “Investigation of Effects of Dynamics on Intrinsic Wrench Sensing in Continuum Robots”.
  2. Chalasani, P., Wang, L., Roy, R., Simaan, N., Taylor, R.H., Kobilarov, M., “Concurrent Nonparametric Estimation of Organ Geometry and Tissue Stiffness Using Continuous Adaptive Palpation”.
  3. Srivatsan, A.,  Ayvali, E., Wang, L., Roy, R., Simaan, N., Choset, H., “Complementary Model Update: A Method for Simultaneous Registration and Stiffness Mapping in Flexible Environments”.
  4. Ayvali, E., Srivatsan, A., Wang, L. Roy, R., Simaan, N., Choset, H., “Using Bayesian Optimization to Guide Probing of a Flexible Environment for Simultaneous Registration and Stiffness Mapping”.

 

The National Institute of Health has awarded the Advanced Robotics and Mechanism Applications (ARMA) a two year grant for exploratory research on use of snake-like robots for resection of bladder cancer tumors. This research is lead by Dr. Nabil Simaan (department of Mechanical Engineering) and Dr. Duke S. Herrell (Department of Urology).

This project focuses on enabling higher precision, safer, and more dexterous resection and surveillance of bladder tumors. Current surgical tool limitations hinder accurate and complete tumor resections and visualization; result in improper staging and increase rates of perforations and tumor recurrence. The proposed technology will reduce surgeon burden, improve resection accuracy, and hopefully reduce recurrence rates, trauma, and patient treatment cost.

See the following page for details on this interdesciplinary resesarch project.

The National Science Foundation has awarded ARMA a 3-year grant to design and develop modeling and control strategies for robots capable of supporting image-based biopsy while offering motion capabilities in both macro-scale and micro-scale. The students supporting the submission of this award included Long Wang and Haoran Yu.

The paper "Trans-Nasal Robotic Micro-Surgery of the Throat: A Cadaveric Feasibility Study" by Andrea Bajo, Latif Dharamsi, John Netterville, Gaelyn Garrett and Nabil Simaan won first runner up award for best oral presentation in the 2013 Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics.

Congratulations to Giuseppe Del Giudice on passing his Ph.D. preliminary exam (also knows as qualifying exam). Giuseppe joined ARMA as an intern and we are thrilled to see his continued success as he advanced his skills and research to earn a Ph.D. degree.

 

Andrea successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation in March 2013 and recently accepted a position as System Research Engineer at MAKO Surgical Corp., Fort Lauderdale, FL. MAKO Surgical Corp. focuses on robotic-assisted orthopedics and implants for knee and hip procedures.

ARMA members wish Andrea the best of luck with his future endeavors.

Congratulations to Rashid Yasin for successfully passing his Ph.D. prelims (commonly known as the qualifying exams). We look forward to seeing him prosper as a Ph.D. student at ARMA.

ARMA paper titled "Robotic-Assisted Micro Surgery of the Throat: The Trans-Nasal Approach" by Andrea Bajo, Latif Dharamsi, Gaelyn Garrett, James Netterville and Nabil Simaan won finalist for best mediacl robotics paper in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'2013). This award will recognize outstanding work in the area of medical robotics and computer-assisted interventional devices and systems.

Jason Pile successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation titled "WIRE-ACTUATED PARALLEL ROBOTS FOR COCHLEAR IMPLANTATION WITH IN-VIVO SENSORY FEEDBACK". 
ARMA team members and students wish Jason the best of luck with his career. He has already a good start since he immediately Joined the research & development team of Intuitive Surgical at Sunnyvale CA. Good luck Jason :-).

 

The A.R.M.A. Lab has five papers at the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Karlsruhe, Germany. The papers focus on cochlear implants, micro-surgery of the eye, urology, otolaryngology, and exploration of flexible environments. One of the papers, "Robotic-Assisted Microsurgery of the Throat: the Trans-Nasal Approach" by Bajo, Daharamsi, Netterville, Garrett, and Simaan, is also finalist for best medical robotics paper. This is the second year in a row that one of the A.R.M.A. Laboratory's papers is selected for this prestigious award. Fingers crossed!

Nima Sarli's paper titled "Characterization of Resection Dexterity in Transurethral Resection of Bladder Tumors: a Kinematic Study" has been accepted for publication in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2015. Nima also passed his Ph.D. qualifying exam. Congratualtions to Nima!.

Andrea Bajo successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation on 3/15/2013. His dissertation titled "Control, Sensing, and Telemanipulation of Surgical Continuum Robots" presents contributions in the areas of contact detection and estimation of contact location for continuum robots, hybrid force/motion control for continuum robots, and constrained telemanipulation of continuum robots. Algorithms developed during his Ph.D. research were implemented on several robotic platfroms including the single port access surgical system (the IREP), a novel robot for trans-urethral bladder tumor resection, and a robot for micro-surgery of the upper airways.

Andrea started his journey with ARMA as a visiting undergraduatre student in summer of 2007. He returned to ARMA as a masters student in 9/2008 and has been with ARMA since then. He has contributed to the development of several robotic systems in the lab and assisted in developing research plans for natural orifice surgery in several application areas including Urology, otolaryngology, and trans-abdominal single port access surgery.

  1. RET supplement
  2. ARMA at IEEE ICRA2012
  3. ARMA licenses new technology for single port access surgery
  4. ARMA presents the IREP at TEDMED2011 in SanDiego