From Haptics
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While the Haptics Lab works hard, we also have a lot of fun. If you want to see some of the recent lab activities, click here.
Summer 2008
August 28, 2008
Please welcome Ann Majewicz to the Haptics Lab. She is a new Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering. She received her B.S. in 2008 from University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with a double major in Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. In the graduate student office space, her seat will be #23 on the graduate seating chart.
August 22, 2008
Timothy Judkins, David Mayhew, and Ben Bachrach from Intelligent Automation, Inc. (http://www.i-a-i.com) will present an overview of their rehabilitation robotics research 10-10:30 am in CSEB 320. Click here for Abstract.
July 31, 2008
This week we say goodbye to REU students Allison de Groot and Alex "The Vach" Vacharat. The picture above is from our Thursday Lab Lunch -- this week we went to Niwana.
July 2, 2008
Lab movie day: Wall-E!
July 1, 2008
Allison Okamura, along with Nancy Amato of Texas A&M organized a Graduate Student Fellowship for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. The goal of the fellowship is to recognize and encourage gender diversity in the field.
June 1, 2008
The haptics lab welcomes a number of new undergraduate researchers to the lab:
Sarah Lewin, a rising high school senior at Friends School, will do research in the lab this summer, helping with the foot haptics project. Last summer she also spent time in the lab, working on eye surgery simulation.
Allison de Groot is a rising junior in bioengineering at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is part of the CISST ERC REU program, and is mentored by Kyle Reed to develop a gait-altering shoe for rehabiliation.
Alex Vacharat is a rising sophomore in mechanical engineering here at JHU. He is part of the CISST ERC REU program, and is mentored by Jim Gwilliam to develop models for teleoperated palpation with haptic feedback.
Kamini Balaji is a rising senior in biomedical engineering here at JHU. She is an REU fellow on Allison's NSF CAREER grant. She is mentored by Tomo Yamamoto and is working on real-time visual displays of stiffness models acquired during teleoperation.
Kathryn Smith, a rising junior in mechanical engineering at JHU has been in the lab for some time as a researcher and lab manager. This summer she is switching to a new project, testing the effectiveness of vibration feedback to the foot.
Ryan Decker is a rising sophomore in mechanical engineering here at JHU. He is working with Kyle Reed and Allison de Groot on the gait-altering shoe.
Spring 2008
May 31, 2008
The Haptics Lab hosts Robofest 2008, the annual JHU Robotics/LCSR picnic. Details and pictures are at Robofest2008.
May 28, 2008
Lab Tour for the ERC CISST Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) students at 10 am.
May 27, 2008
The Haptics Lab welcomes undergraduate researchers Steve Iannelli, Rosemary Bauer, and Michael Locastro. Steve is a rising JHU Senior in mechanical engineering and will help with the Major Research Infrastructure project. Rosemary Bauer is also a rising JHU senior in mechanical engineering and will help Allison continue the development of the new Freshman courses. Michael is a rising senior in electrical engineering at University of Maryland Baltimore County and will work on a hypertonia simulator with David Grow and Amy Bastian. Michael is an REU fellow on Allison's NSF CAREER grant.
May 21, 2008
It's graduation time! Former Haptics Lab Ph.D.s Panadda (Nim) Marayong and Bob Webster were back in town for graduation. The hooding ceremony was the evening of Wednesday, May 21, at Homewood field starting at 7 pm. There was a party for lab members, friends, and families in the Robotorium from 4-6 pm.
May 20, 2008
Rohan Ramesh, a high school senior at Gilman School, will do research in the lab until June 4. He will help with the foot haptics project. Welcome Rohan!
May 1, 2008
Eight members of the JHU haptics lab attended Prof. Katherine Kuchenbecker's Haptics Project Open House on Thursday, May 1, Noon to 2 p.m. at UPenn. We enjoyed visiting former lab members Katherine and Joe Romano.
April 25, 2008
Former Haptics Lab Ph.D. Jake Abbott (currently a postdoc at ETH Zurich with Brad Nelson) has just accepted a faculty position at the University of Utah. He will start in October 2008. Congratulations, Jake!
April 23-24, 2008
Netta Gurari, Amy Blank, and Allison Okamura attended the Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 Phase II Kick Off Meeting in St. Michael's Maryland.
April 16, 2008
Li Jiang from Stanford University and David Abbink from Delft University of Technology visited us today. We enjoyed their talks and brainstorming with them about haptics.
March 9, 2008
Willow Garage visited us. The visitors included Keenan Wyrobek, a former JHU Mechanical Engineering undergrad.
March 7, 2008
Professor Allison Okamura has been appointed an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions of Haptics. An article about the new journal that includes Okamura's work on educational haptics is described in an article in IEEE's publication The Institute.
February 6, 2008
Sarthak Misra, K. T. Ramesh, and Allison M. Okamura's paper "Physically Valid Surgical Simulators: Linear versus Nonlinear Tissue Models" was awarded a Best Poster Award at Medicine Meets Virtual Reality (MMVR 16) conference. MMVR conference was held at Long Beach, California from January 29 - February 1, 2008. (http://www.nextmed.com/mmvr_virtual_reality.html)
February 2, 2008
Haptics lab (and friends) ski/snowboarding trip.
February 1, 2008
Prospective graduate student visit day for the Mechanical Engineering Department.
January 25, 2008
Amy Blank, David Grow, and Tom Wedlick have passed their departmental qualifying exams. Congratulations, everyone!
Fall 2007
November 5 2007
Sarthak Misra was awarded a travel grant to attend a week long workshop on "Scientific Computing Applications in Surgical Simulation of Soft Tissues" (http://www.ipam.ucla.edu/programs/vs2008/) at the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), UCLA.
October 31 2007
Bob Webster, Allison Okamura, and Noah Cowan's paper "Toward Active Cannulas: Miniature Snake-Like Surgical Robots" was announced today to be a IROS 2006 Best Paper Award Finalist. (They announce the finalists and the winners at the following year's IROS, and the total number of papers at IROS is approximately 700.) Congrats, Bob!
October 29 2007
Prof. Allison Okamura has been appointed the Gilbert Decker Faculty Scholar in the JHU Whiting School of Engineering. This three-year scholarship was established by alumnus Gil Decker, Class of 1958. Given to a senior assistant professor or associate professor who exhibits exceptional achievement in his or her area of expertise, the award grants faculty scholar status for a three-year term with flexible financial support to promote innovative research, teaching activities and entrepreneurial thinking. Congrats Allison!
October 26 2007
Netta Gurari passed her Graduate Oral Board exam today. Congrats, Netta, it's a large accomplishment and we are very proud.
October 10 2007
Sarthak Misra was the recipient of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Technical Committee on Haptics (TCH) Student Exchange Program. His proposal was titled 'Surgical training performance using different simulation fidelities' and would involve working with and visiting Dr. Matthias Harders' group at ETH Zurich (http://www.vision.ee.ethz.ch/~mharders/home.html).
September 9 2007
The Haptics Lab will shortly have a wiki webpage!
September 6 2007
The Haptics Lab would like to like to officially welcome its newest members: Kyle Reed, Amy Blank, and Tricia Gibo.
Dr. Kyle Reed is a Los Alamos native who joins the Haptics Lab from Northwestern University. While at Northwestern, Kyle studied human-machine collaboration culminating in his thesis, which is entitled "Understanding the Haptic Interactions of Working Together". Kyle is joining the Haptics Lab as a Post-Doc researching steerable needles.
Amy Blank, who is co-advised by Dr. Whitcomb, is a second-year M.E. Ph.D. student who has been a regular in the Haptics Lab working on projects with Katherine Kuchenbecker and Tom Wedlick. Her current project, which also involved Katherine, studies the necessity of proprioception. Welcome new lab members!
Tricia Gibo is a new ME Ph.D. student in the Haptics Lab. She graduated from the University of Southern California in 2007 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. She spent two years with USC's Visual Processing Laboratory studying the plasticity of the inner retina of mice under various rearing conditions. Tricia also worked on the Smart Tools project with Dr. Russell Taylor during the summer of 2006. In her free time, Tricia enjoys swimming, snowboarding, and scrapbooking.
September 1 2007
NSF Major Research Instrumentation Grant awarded: The new Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics has received a $2 million Major Research Instrumentation grant (Allison Okamura, PI) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). (http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0722943) . Congrats Allison!
The Link Foundation (http://www.binghamton.edu/home/link/link.html) awarded Sarthak Misra the Advanced Training and Simulation Fellowship (http://www.ist.ucf.edu/link_foundation.htm) for 2007.
Dr. Mohsen Mavhash has left the Haptics Lab to take a position as a Research Professor at Boston University, where he will work with Pierre Dupont (http://robotics.bu.edu/dupont/people.htm). Congratulations, Mohsen!
August 15 2007
The National Institutes of Health(NIH) has awarded $2.5 million for the grant "Steering Flexible Needles in Soft Tissue", which Allison is leading. The grant includes other researchers from JHU, University of California at Berkeley, and Queen's University in Canada. Information on this project can be found at http://lcsr.jhu.edu/needlesteering. Everyone involved in submitting this proposal did a spectacular job!
