Saturday, December 11, 2010

Leng-feng completed his Ph.D.

Joined the lab while he is an undergraduate student in 2001, Leng-Feng completed his senior design project (2003), M.S. thesis (2005), and now his Ph.D. dissertation with Dr. Krovi. His dissertation committee members are Dr. Mayne, Dr. Soom, and Dr. Mendel.

He will join the dept. of Kinesiology at UMass Amherst as a Post-doctoral Research Associate. A 'farewell' luncheon were held in Kebab and Curry restaurant with some of the lab members.

Friday, December 10, 2010

12th International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, 2010

Dr. Krovi will be presenting at the 12th International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, in New Dehli and Agra, India, with paper titled "The Reconfigurable Omnidirectional Articulated Mobile Robot (ROAMeR)", co-author with QiuShi Fu and Xiaobo Zhou.

About ISER:
ISER is a series of bi-annual symposia, which have been held successively in MontrĂ©al (Canada), Toulouse (France), Kyoto (Japan), Stanford (USA), Barcelona (Spain), Sydney (Australia), Honolulu (USA), Sant’Angelo (Italy), Singapore, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and Athens (Greece)

The goal of these symposia is to provide a forum dedicated to Experimental Robotics Research. The number of papers presented during the symposium is small (less than 50) and the meeting is single track in order to maximize interaction between participants. Papers should focus on theories and principles, which have been validated by experiments, and on experimental paradigms and designs that inspire new theoretical approaches. Papers which discuss how theoretical conjectures were invalidated, revised, or confirmed and present details of experimental implementations and practice are of great interest.
The paper will be available for download after the conference! A video of the robot is shown here:

Colin Lea among five UB students nominated for Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship.

Colin Lea, who is an undergraduate student working is among one of the five UB students nominated for Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. Congratulation! [link]   
"Colin Lea of Oswego is pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering and is president of UB Robotics, an undergraduate engineering club. He performs research in UB's Automation, Robotics and Mechatronics Lab and has been awarded two Zimmer Awards for research on human-robot interaction and haptic device design and control. Lea plans to pursue graduate research in the areas of robotics and interaction."

Elementary school kids learn about Robotics and Haptics

On 19 Oct. 2010, about 20 kids from local elementary schools visited our lab. Mrs. Julie Tarbell, who organized the field trip, is also UB graduate. The kids learned about the research in the lab, and have the opportunity to try out some of the haptic simulations created in our lab.
Picture: Dr. Krovi explaining to the crowd as the kids trying out the haptic simulation with the Novint Falcon.
Picture: Haptic-Teleoperate the Hexapod using the High Definition Haptic Device (HD)2.

2010 North American Summer School in Surgical Robotics and Simulation

Leng-Feng and Madu are 2 of the 50 selected students to attend the "2010 North American Summer School in Surgical Robotics and Simulation" held in University of Washington, on 23-27 August, 2010. They presented their posters there as well. See the summer school website here.
In this picture: (from left to right), Madu, Dr. Chizeck, Leng-Feng, Dr. Hannaford, Dr. Howe, Dr. Poignet, and Dr. Taylor.