Physical Phantom Biopsy on Medipoint

CONGRATULATIONS to the ARMLAB/CIS LAB group

Video of Physical Phantom Biopsy Demo

has been selected as a part of the online article on

MediPoint: Biopsy Devices - Current and Future Players

Click here to see the video.

ROAMeR at Stanford University ...

ROAMER rises like a Phoenix at the DSCC2013

Date: Oct. 23, 2013. 1530-1700 hrs Zulu

Venue: Stanford University

Goal: Demonstration in the Experimental Session of the 2013 ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference (DSCC 2013), East Courtyard,  Special session TuET9

ROAMeR is a 9 DOFs reconfigurable planar mobile robot. Redundant degrees of freedom allow the robot to change its configuration while performing the desired trajectory tracking task in unstructured environments, e.g. rescue robots in the earthquake.  Moreover, the reconfigurability is of great importance in the design of future generation of Personal Electric Vehicles for intra-city  personal transportation services.

The ROAMeR was a smash hit at the Inaugural Experimental Session of the DSCC2013 – kudos go to  Javad Sovizi and  Madu Sathianarayanan (and Xiaobo Zhou behind the scenes) for making this such an unprecedented success!!

Discussion on the ROAMeR specifications

Straight line trajectory tracking

Obstacle avoidance

Turning in the limited space

National Grid Worlshop (ARMLAB)

This summer, ARMLAB hosted high school students visiting UB engineering school through National Grid summer camp program.  We offered several demonstrations of the distinguished outreaches of our Lab researches to the students in a fascinating and informative fashion to familiarize them with the new robotic technologies. They were allowed to interact with the robotic systems available in our laboratory that appeared to be not only entertaining but also assisting them understanding more technical robotic concepts. We prepared four demonstration stations (Hexapod by Aliakbar Alamdari, Surgical Haptic Simulation by Seung-kook Jun, Nao by Xiaobo Zhou and ROAMeR by Javad Sovizi) that are described in more details below.

1. 6-DOF Parallel Manipulator (Hexapod):In this station, a 6-DOF parallel manipulator (Hexapod) was introduced to the students and several translational, rotational and complex end effector movements were produced to show the capability of the system in executing complicated manipulation tasks. Throughout this session, students were familiarized with the robotic systems beyond many devices they are experiencing in their daily life, as car and airplane simulators etc.
2. Surgical Haptic Simulation: In this station, students interacted with a Phantom Omni haptic device to experience a force feedback while performing a virtual ear surgery that included both removal of the soft tissues and drilling through hard bone.  The goal of this session was to demonstrate how haptic technologies (with high-res visualization and high-fidelity feedback) can be assisting in training the surgeons.
3. Nao:One of the most interesting stations to the students was the Nao demonstration. This session displayed the state-of-the-art in humanoid robotic technology. The Nao was programmed to produce several movements that resembled human motions. In addition, taking advantage of the variety of Nao built-in sensors (auditory, visual, motions and touch), the students could interact with the Nao, resembling the human-like interactions. 
4. Reconfigurable Omnidirectional Articulated wheeled Mobile Robot  (ROAMeR): In this session, mechanical and electrical structures of the ROAMeR were described to the students. The goal of this session was to point out the benefits of the re-configurability of the ROAMeR. They could see how ROAMeR can simultaneously follow a trajectory and reconfigure to bypass the obstacles in an unstructured environment.   

This year at UB-Tech Savvy, we kicked-off our lab's annual outreach efforts with our newer and upgraded ARMLAB's robotic workshop. The workshop offered the most attractive and entertaining experiences while at the same time technically appealing to the middle- and high- school student participants.

The presentations, led by Dr.Krovi and followed by Madusudanan, familiarized the students about robotics, building mechatronic systems and info on valuable resources for being a hobby-roboticist from an early age. A notable addition from previous years' workshops include Nao- (humanoid) and Kinect-based exercises that provided the students with a glimpse of current advancements. The presentation also focused a specific section on medical robotic applications and some of important contributions made by ARMLAB in this niche area. 

As it has been the case in all our previous workshops, the hands-on sessions stole the show hands-on among the school buddies. Altogether four demonstration stations were setup as a part of this outreach effort with the aim of providing the students exciting and state-of-the-art robotic-demos including: (1) kinect-vision based mobile robot controller (by Michael Anson), (2) surgical haptic simulation (by Seung-Kook Jun) and (3) Nao (by Suren Kumar). Sheflika Prasad, a high school student who worked with our lab in the past and recently won the robotics competition (Tech Wars for Autonomous Robot category) conducted by Niagara County Community College (NCCC) received a honorable mention. The functional prototype (autonomous soccer bot) she developed as a part of the competition was also stationed for display that provided the final icing on the cake and made the day overall for us, ARMies. 

1. Autonomous Soccer Bot:

Sheflika demonstrated her autonomous bot that had the capability to sense the line-maps marked on the floor in order to autonomously carry out a operation of picking a ball, moving along a trajectory and dropping it in a target bin. 

2. Mobile Robot and Kinect: 

Mike developed an interactive app using iRobot's API and Kinect API that allows one to intuitively control the motion of the Roomba using the hand-waiving motions which are picked by using Kinect camera and transmitted as appropriate motion commands to move the Roomba to new locations. 

3. Surgical Haptic Simulation using Phantom Omni:

Seung-kook's station enabled students to perceive what is haptics (force feedback) and how it offers a valuable experience to training surgeons using high-res visualization and high-fidelity haptic feedback. The demo provided the students to conduct a virtual ear surgery using the haptic simulator that included both removal of soft tissues and drilling through a hard bone in the virtural reality environment. 

4. Nao- new member joining the ARMies:

The Nao demo, prepared by Suren, displayed the current state-of-art in humanoid robotic technology to the young-buds. The demo showed the capability of Nao in terms of its human-resemblance in motions and interactions with its variety of sensors (auditory, visual, motions and touch).

Opening of the Computer Integrated Surgery Laboratory at Univ. at Buffalo (CIS@SUNY-UB)

Collaboration between Dr. Venkat Krovi, Assoc. Professor in the MAE Department at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Dr. Pankaj Singhal, Assoc. Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, has led to the inauguration of the Computer Integrated Surgery Laboratory at UB. Located in 201 E Bell Hall on UB’s North Campus, this lab will focus on contemporary issues in the area of surgical robotics, including simulation and training, quantitative skill assessment, and novel device design for medical applications. In the long-run, we hope to tackle such an array of challenging problems from both theoretical and experimental perspectives. Below you will also find a list of our publications that has either been accepted or still under review from our group.The website for the CIS lab is currently under construction. Please stay tuned to this blog for any future updates in this regard!

Journal:

1. Jun, S.-K., Sathia Narayanan, M., Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, Corso, J. J. and Krovi, V., “Evaluation of Robotic Minimally Invasive Surgical Skills using Motion Studies”, 2013 Journal of Robotic Surgery (to be published).

Conference: 

09. Kumar, S., Narayanan, M.S., Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, Corso, J.J., and Krovi, V., Product of Tracking Experts for Surgical Tool Visual Tracking, 2013 IEEE/ASME Conference on Automation Science and Engineering, Madison WI (submitted for review). 

08. Kumar, S., Narayanan, M.S., Eddib, A., MD, Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, and Krovi, V., “Vision-based Decision Support and Safety Systems for Robotic Surgery”, 2013 Medical Cyber Physical Systems (MedCPS), Philadephia, PA. 

07. Abber Eddib, Neha Jain, Sara Hughes, Alexander Eswar, Mehmet Erk, Caroline Michalik, Venkat Krovi, Pankaj Singhal: Influence of Morbid Obesity on Surgical Outcomes In Robotic Assisted Gynecologic Surgery.  Submited to the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. 

06. Abber Eddib, Neha Jain, Sara Hughes, Alexander Eswar, Mehmet Erk, Caroline Michalik, Venkat Krovi, Pankaj Singhal: Analysis of the impact of age on the surgical outcomes after robot assisted laparoscopic hysterectomies.  Submitted. 

05. Pankaj Singhal, Wainwright Jaggernauth, Kunle Odunsi, Shashikant Lele, “Clear Cell Carcinoma of the Endometrium:  Pattern of Outcomes and Failures”. Submitted. 

04. Abber Eddib, Neha Jain, Sara Hughes, Alexander Eswar, Mehmet Erk, Caroline Michalik, Venkat Krovi, Pankaj Singhal: An analysis of the Impact of Previous Laparoscopic Hysterectomy Experience on the Learning Curve for Robotic Hysterectomy. The Journal of Robotic Surgery, Feb. 2013 

03. Seungkook Jun, Madusudanan S. Narayanan, Abeer Eddib, Pankaj Singhal, Sudha Garimella  and Venkat Krovi, Minimally Invasive Surgical Skill Assessment by Video-Motion Analysis, 5th Hamlyn Symposium 2012, Royal Geographical Society,  London, England, UK  July 2012. [Runner-up Award] 

02. Seungkook Jun, Madusudanan Narayanan, Abeer Eddib, Pankaj Singhal and Venkat Krovi, "Evaluation of Surgical Skills and Level-of-Expertise for Robotic Surgeries", 2012 Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS' 12) Workshop, Maryland, USA, Mar 20- 22, 2012. [Paper and Poster] 

01. Seungkook Jun, Madusudanan S. Narayanan, Abeer Eddib, Pankaj Singhaland Venkat Krovi, "Assessment of Surgical Skill Expertisebased on Micro-Motion Analysis", 2012 International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob' 12) Roma, Italy, Jun 24-28, 2012.

Human Motion Capture and Analysis Poster Recieves Runner-Up in ICT Day Workshop

Congratulations to Seungkook Jun, Xiaobo Zhou, Dr. Venkat Krovi, and Dr. Daniel Ramsey for receiving runner-up in the recently held Information and Computing Technology (ICT) Day Workshop by the Department of Computer Science Engineering. The poster, entitled Cyber Physical Systems: Quantitative Sensing of Dynamic Behaviors for Progressive Rehabilitation, was presented by Seungkook Jun. The research team sought to determine the feasibility of using commercially available human motion capturing devices (such as the Microsoft Kinect) as economically-viable tools in motion analysis. This analysis is then applied to the design and implementation of rehabilitative devices, including articulated knee braces.

Related Publications:

[1] S.K. Jun, X. Zhou, D. Ramsey, V. Krovi, "A Comparative Study of Human Motion Capture and Analysis Tools", In International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR 2013), Seattle WA, June 24 -26 2013. (submitted for review)

[2] S.K. Jun, X. Zhou, D. Ramsey, V. Krovi, "Kineto-static Design-Refinement of Articulated Knee Braces", In ASME IDETC/ CIE 2013, Portland Oregon, August 4-7 2013. (submitted for review)

[3] Zhou, X, Tang, C.-P., and Krovi, V., “Analysis Framework for Cooperating Mobile Cable Robots,” 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA '12), Minneapolis, MN, May 14-18 2012.

[4] Lee, L.-F., Zhou, X., Krovi, V., “Quantitative Performance Analysis of Haptic Devices with Parallelogram Subsystems”, In ASME IDETC/ CIE 2011, DETC 2011-47725, Washington, DC, August 28-31, 2011.

[5] Narayanan, M.S., Chakravarty, S., Shah, H.L., and Krovi, V., "Kinematic-Static- and Workspace Analysis of a 6- P-U-S Parallel Manipulator", In ASME IDETC/CIE 2010 Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 15-18, 2010.

Dr. Krovi and his Crew Awarded Bruce Holm Catalyst Research Fund

The research grant with Dr. Krovi as the principal investigator (PI) has been awarded with the Bruce Holm Catalyst Research Fund. The Co-PIs on this project include our research collaborators-- Dr. Pankaj Singhal, Asst. Prof in Gyn/Onc Dept at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and Dr. Jason J Corso, Asst. Prof in the Dept. of Computer Science Eng. The proposal submitted by Dr.Krovi and his crew was one among the five research groups selected to receive this fund from UB (Bruce Holm Catalyst Fund). The financial support is intended to move promising technologies, developed within engineering and scientific research labs, closer to the market for possible commercialization. The proposal that was submitted by Dr. Krovi & Co. is based on our current progress on surgical skill assessment. In particular, this work proposes to focus on re-purposing video-based micro-motion analysis in order to improve training for doctors performing robotic surgeries, as well as to serve as a tool in evaluating proficiency. We in ARMLAB congratulate Dr.Krovi and his team for their commendable efforts.

Please see the following links for more information:

http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/news/2013/02/05/ub-investing-in-multiple-research.html?page=all

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2013/02/004.html

Related Publications:

[C04]

Kumar, S., Narayanan, M.S., Misra, S., Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, Corso, J., and Krovi, V., “ Vision based Decision-Support and Safety Systems for Robotic Surgery”, 2013 Medical Cyber-Physical Systems Workshop (MedCPS), Philadelphia, PA, Apr 8, 2013.

[PDF]

[C03]

Jun, S.-K., Narayanan, M.S., Eddib, A., MD, Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, and Krovi, V., “Minimally Invasive Surgical Skill Assessment by Video-Motion Analysis”, 2012 5th Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics, 2012, London, UK, Jun 30-Jul 2. [BIB | RIS]

[PDF]

[C02]

Jun, S.-K., Narayanan, M.S., Eddib, A., MD, Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, and Krovi, V., “Robotic Minimally Invasive Surgical Skill Assessment based on Automated Video-Analysis Motion Studies”, 2012 IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, Roma, Italy, Jun 24-28, 2012. [BIB | RIS]

[PDF]

[C01]

Jun, S.-K., Narayanan, M.S., Eddib, A., MD, Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, and Krovi, V., “Evaluation of Robotic Minimally Invasive Surgical Skills using Motion Studies”, 2012 Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS'12) Workshop, College Park, MD, March 20-22, 2012. [BIB | RIS]

Runner Up Paper Award in 2012 Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics

Our recent progress in the field of surgical robotics that discusses the micro-motion-analysis based skill assessment techniques was presented at the 2012 IEEE Bio-robotics and Bio-mechatronics Conference as well as at 2012 Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics (HSMR). Dr.Krovi attended both the conferences in Italy and London respectively. The audience who attended both the presentations were much appreciative of our work and we wish to thank everyone of them for their valuable questions/ feedback. 

Specifically, the paper titled "Minimally Invasive Surgical Skill Assessment by Video-Motion Analysis" that was presented at HSMR also bagged the runner-up paper-poster award at the conference. Dr.Krovi who presented the paper at the symposium in Imperial College at London, UK personally received the award from Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham and Professor Guang-Zhong Yan. We, from ARMLAB, would like to congratulate all the contributors of this work and wish all the best to achieve further success in their respective endeavors.

Related Publications:
Journal

[J01] Jun, S.-K., Sathia Narayanan, M., Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, Corso, J. J. and Krovi, V., “Evaluation of Robotic Minimally Invasive Surgical Skills using Motion Studies”, 2013 Journal of Robotic Surgery. 

Conferences

[C06] Kumar, S., Sathia Narayanan, M., Singhal, P, MD, Corso, J. J. and Krovi, V., “Product-of-Tracking-Experts for Surgical Tool Visual Tracking”, 2013 IEEE Conference on Auomation Science and Engineering, Madison, WI (submitted for review).

[C05] Kumar, S., Sathia Narayanan, M., Singhal, P, MD, Corso, J. J. and Krovi, V., “Surgical Tool Attributes for Intraoperative Semantic Feedback”, 2013 Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Information Society, Tokyo, Japan (submitted for review).

[C04]Kumar, S., Narayanan, M.S., Misra, S., Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, Corso, J., and Krovi, V., “ Vision based Decision-Support and Safety Systems for Robotic Surgery”, 2013 Medical Cyber-Physical Systems Workshop (MedCPS), Philadelphia, PA, Apr 8, 2013.
[C03]Jun, S.-K., Narayanan, M.S., Eddib, A., MD, Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, and Krovi, V., “Minimally Invasive Surgical Skill Assessment by Video-Motion Analysis”, 2012 5th Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics, 2012, London, UK, Jun 30-Jul 2. [BIB | RIS]  [PDF]
[C02]Jun, S.-K., Narayanan, M.S., Eddib, A., MD, Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, and Krovi, V., “Robotic Minimally Invasive Surgical Skill Assessment based on Automated Video-Analysis Motion Studies”, 2012 IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, Roma, Italy, Jun 24-28, 2012. [BIB | RIS]  [PDF]
[C01]Jun, S.-K., Narayanan, M.S., Eddib, A., MD, Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, and Krovi, V., “Evaluation of Robotic Minimally Invasive Surgical Skills using Motion Studies”, 2012 Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS'12) Workshop, College Park, MD, March 20-22, 2012. [BIB | RIS] [PDF]

Poster
[P01]Seung-kook Jun, "Robotic Surgical Skill Assessment using Therbligs-based Motion Studies", 2012 MAE Dept. Graduate Student Research Poster Competition [PDF]

ARMies at 2012 MAE GSA Research Symposium

Ahead of a busy conference period, ARMLAB members presented their research posters at this year's 2012 MAE GSA Research Symposium. Xiaobo was presenting his current developments with cooperative cable robots while Seung-kook (a.k.a. SK) presented his work on robotic surgical skill assessment based on motion analysis methods.

This work was selected for presentation at 2012 IEEE BioROB conference held at Roma, Italy in June this year. Xiaobo will in turn present his work at 2012 ICRA (St. Paul, MN). Having received words of appreciation and encouragement from the department faculties at the research poster symposium, we wish them all the best for their presentation at the respective conferences.

Related Publications

[1] Zhou, X, Tang, C.-P., and Krovi, V., “Analysis Framework for Cooperating Mobile Cable Robots,” 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA '12), Minneapolis, MN, May 14-18 2012. [BIB | RIS ]

[2] Jun, S.-K., Narayanan, M.S., Eddib, A., MD, Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, and Krovi, V., “Robotic Minimally Invasive Surgical Skill Assessment based on Automated Video-Analysis Motion Studies”, 2012 IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, Jun 24-28, 2012, Roma, Italy. [BIB | RIS]

[3] Jun, S.-K., Narayanan, M.S., Eddib, A., MD, Garimella, S., MD, Singhal, P, MD, and Krovi, V., “Evaluation of Robotic Minimally Invasive Surgical Skills using Motion Studies”, 2012 Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS'12) Workshop, March 20-22, 2012, College Park, MD. [BIB | RIS]

2012 Haptics Workshop: Come Explore the Touchy-Feely Side of Robotics

Here we are again at the 7th year of Tech Savvy- "Doing Well by Doing Good"-- the annual workshop for middle school and high school girls that took place in University at Buffalo. There were over 500 girls from many different local high schools with a "Haptics: Come Explore the Touchy-Feely Side of Robotics" Workshop from the ARMLAB once again!!!

In the hour-long workshop Dr. Krovi, Shefalika Prasad (local high school student), Ziyun Jo Zhou (REU student), Light Le and Justin Storms (undergraduates at UB) presented fundamental concepts and basics of robotics/ haptics outlining the application needs, engineering challenges and highlighting the bright future of robotics/haptics -- before the FUN and DEMONSTRATIONS began!!

One of the major highlights of this year was of course the guest speaker, Shefalika who is actually the first prize recipient at Tech Wars NCCC 2012 competition in the autonomous robot category for concept-design and fabrication of a automated robotic parking gate system. She talked about her winning project design and her parking gate system was on display which was well received by the girls who attended the workshop. Jo and Light presented their project on surgical haptic simulations that they are currently pursuing in ARMLAB and led way to interactive hands-on sessions.

The girls were very excited to try out the attractive demo applications -- needle biopsy simulator, ear surgery simulator as well as Cre8 (freeform CAD application). Working with cutting edge haptic and robotics applications, proved to be a great learning opportunity to these students. This workshop also served to provide valuable information to many others who were actually wanting to get their hands on pursuing robotics.

We thank AAUW for their continuing support. More details about the workshop and the presentations can be found at http://sites.google.com/site/techsavvyroboticsworkshop/.

Buffalo Museum of Science: Surgical Robotics and Haptic Workshop

This summer we in ARMLAB hosted a series of workshops including the most recent one which took place in the second week of August in collaboration with Buffalo Museum of Science as well UB Program Development crew. The major theme of this workshop was informed as surgical robotics and haptics. The workshop was attended by 25-30 high school students from different schools mostly within Buffalo.
The primary presenters of the workshop included Dr. Venkat Krovi, who was joined by our collaborators (Dr. Frank C Mendel, Professor in Gross Anatomical Science and Dr. Sudha Garimella, Pediatrics Nephrologist) and our very own senior doctoral students -- Seung Kook (SK) and Madu.

The workshop highlighted different aspects of robotics with interesting "eye-catchy" simulations. Later, Dr. Mendel and Dr. Garimella discussed critical issues in conducting real surgeries and needle based percutaneous procedures successfully on real-life patients.The most highlighting aspect of this workshop was the interactive session between students and clinical physicians wherein the high school kids posed really challenging and interesting questions.

After the questioning session, there were demos setup that offered the students the opportunity to get hands-on with some of the tools we developed as a part of our research including bio-mechanical simulations, needle biopsy and haptic surgical simulations. The hands-on needle insertion demos along with the biopsy visualizer (CT and ultrasound scan) application proved to be the most attractive and informative. The workshop was well received both by the organizers as well as the participants. So, the last but not the least, we would like to extend our gratitude to the Buffalo Museum of Science organizers in providing us an opportunity to conduct this outreach workshop.