News
August 22, 2024
This was a big day for the lab with two successful PhD defenses!
Congratulations to Dr. Ayush Giri!
Congratulations to Dr. Fred Lin!
April 2024
IEEE RoboSoft 2024 was a success! Tania was Co-Program Chair, together with Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, and Michael Tolley and Nick Gravish were the General Chairs.
We all attended the conference here in San Diego, with many great highlights.
Anoush presented his paper titled, "A Soft Robotic Wrist Orthosis Using Textile Pneumatic Actuators For Passive Rehabilitation", which was nominated as a Best Paper Finalist!
We also gave lab tours and demos to the conference participants, with nearly 200 people visiting our lab.
April 2024
Robert, Ayush, and Tania attended IEEE Haptics Symposium in Longbeach, CA. Robert presented our work on the H3Kit, a hand-held educational haptic device.
The paper, titled "H3Kit: Hand-Held Haptic Kit for STEM Education" was nominated as a Best Paper Finalist!
March 2024
September 2023
We attended the SoCal Robotics Symposium at UCI. Anoush, Robert, and Anna presented posters, and Sukjun and Tania both gave talks.
August 2023
Kaityln, Nina, and Alex presented their work at the Undergraduate Summer Research Conference.
July 2023
Tania was awarded the ASEE Outstanding New Mechanical Engineering Educator Award!
June 2023
Connor, Fred, and Cedric presented their work at ICRA 2023 in London!
Connor presented a poster on our ICRA paper titled "Image Segmentation for Continuum Robots from a Kinematic Prior".
Fred presented our recently published TRo paper titled "A Generalized Framework for Concentric Tube Robot Design Using Gradient-Based Optimization".
Fred also presented a poster on our ICRA paper titled "HaPPArray: Haptic Pneumatic Pouch Array for Feedback in Hand-Held Robots".
Cedric presented our work on small-scale growing robots with working channels at our Soft Growing Robot Workshop, and won third place for his poster!
May 26, 2023
Congratulations to Connor Watson for successfully defending his PhD thesis! He is the first PhD student to graduate from the lab, and he will be joining Intuitive Surgical in just a few weeks. Congratulations Dr. Watson!
April 2023
Alex presented "Enabling Higher Performance Concentric Tube Robots Via Multiple-Constant-Curvature Tubes" at ISMR (International Symposium of Medical Robotics), and Tania gave a workshop presentation.
April 2023
Ayush won 2nd place at the UCSD Grad Slam! He presented his work on a soft robotic system for colonoscopy. Congrats Ayush!
October 2022
Tania was awarded the JSOE Outstanding Graduate Student Mentoring Award for MAE!
October 2022
Connor and Micah presented their work at IROS 2022 in Kyoto Japan! (Tania was chairing another session during their presentations, so we don't have pictures of the presentations themselves.)
September 2022
We attended the SoCal Robotics Symposium at UCLA! All 7 PhD students attended and participated in the many workshops offered. Connor also gave a 'Rising Stars' talk, and Tania gave a 'New Faculty' talk. Robert, Ayush, and Fred presented posters on their ongoing work.
June 2022
Tania was selected as a 2022 Beckman Young Investigator! The program seeks to foster the invention of methods, instruments, and materials that will open new avenues of research in science. Our project will focus on the investigation of soft, growing robots with reconfigurable joints and variable stiffness with the goal of overcoming the limitations of existing systems to enable safe, efficient access to hard-to-reach locations inside the human body. Read more here.
June 2022
Two of our undergraduate researchers, Rose and Anna, are graduating! Congratulations!!
Three papers accepted for presentation at IEEE/RAS International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2022! Congratulations Micah, Connor, Dan, and Cedric!
Two papers accepted to IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob) 2022! Congratulations Ayush, Cedric, and Mufeng!
"Learning Non-Parametric Models in Real Time via Online Generalized Product of Experts" is accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. Congratulations Connor!
"Design and Evaluation of a Miniaturized Force Sensor Based on Wave Backscattering" is accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. Congratulations Dan and Cedric!
"A Generalized Framework for Concentric Tube Robot Design Using Gradient-Based Optimization" is accepted to IEEE Transactions on Robotics. Congratulations Fred and Cedric!
May 31, 2022
Alex and Felipe presented their work during the final presentation session for the GEAR Program. Nice work!
May 19, 2022
Micah successfully defended his M.S. thesis, titled "Tactile Perception for Growing Robots via Discrete Curvature Measurements". Congratulations Micah!
May 4, 2022
Dan successfully defended his M.S. thesis, titled "Design and Evaluation of a Miniaturized Wireless Force Sensor Based on Wave Backscattering". Congratulations Dan!
April 2022
Tania was awarded an NSF CAREER grant to continue our work on hand-held continuum robots!
February 2022: Postdoc Cedric Girerd has accepted an offer from the CNRS as a Researcher! He will stay at UCSD as a Visiting Scholar until the end of the year. Congratulations Cedric!!
July 2021: Tania was awarded a Hellman Fellowship from the Society of Hellman Fellows
July 2021: "Closed-Loop Position Control for Growing Robots Via Online Jacobian Corrections" is accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, lead author Connor Watson. Congrats!
July 2021: Tse Tsui presented his work titled "Design of a Portable Shape Display for Augmented Reality" (virtually) at World Haptics!
March 2021: "VINE Catheter for Endovascular Surgery" is accepted to IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics, lead author Mingyuan (Richard) Li.
December 2020: "Towards a Wireless Force Sensor Based on Wave Backscattering for Medical Applications" is accepted to IEEE Transactions on Sensors, lead authors Regan Zhang and Cedric Girerd. Congrats!
December 2020: "Design and Control of a Hand-Held Concentric Tube Robot for Minimally Invasive Surgery" is accepted to IEEE Transactions on Robotics, lead author Cedric Girerd. Congrats Cedric!
November 2020: Presented at Material Research Society Fall Meeting in Symposium titled ‘Materials and Mechanics Challenges in Haptics for Human-Machine Interfaces'
October 2020: Presented at IROS 2020 workshop on localization and control of growing robots in medical applications
September 2020: "Teaching with Hapkit: Enabling Online Haptics Courses with Hands-on Laboratories" is accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine.
June 2020: Presented "Integration of Weekly Reflections in an Introductory Design Class to Assess Experiential Learning Outcomes" at the ASEE Annual Conference
June 2020: Connor presented his work at ICRA -- Congrats Connor!
June 2020
Rachel and Agustin presented their work during the final presentation session for the GEAR Program. Nice work! See their work highlighted on the GEAR webpage!
May 29, 2020
Andy successfully defended his M.S. thesis, titled "Design of a Portable Shape Display for Augmented Reality". Congratulations Andy!
May 22, 2020
Fred successfully defended his M.S. thesis, titled "Development of a Low-Cost System for Laparoscopic Skills Training". Congratulations Fred!
March 2020
"Permanent Magnet-Based Localization for Growing Robots in Medical Applications" accepted to Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) with presentation at ICRA- Congratulations Connor!
UCSD article and video about the paper.
November 22, 2019
Connor successfully defended his M.S. thesis, titled "Permanent Magnet-Based Localization for Growing Robots in Medical Applications". Congratulations Connor!
November 7, 2019
Successful demo at the San Diego Robotics Forum at UCSD. Congratulations Cedric!
November 2019
"Development of a Low-Cost System for Laparoscopic Skills Training" accepted to special issue of JMRR- Congratulations Fred!
July 2019
Joint appointment in the department of surgery
Tania now has a joint appointment with the Department of Surgery here at UCSD. She is excited to join the Division of Minimally Invasive Surgery!
Read more in the July Newsletter from the Chair of Surgery.
April 18, 2019
UCSD Jacobs School of engineering research expo
Connor, Fred, and Alston presented posters at the graduate student Research Expo!
November 8, 2018
Contextual robotics institute Forum
Tania gave a talk at the CRI Forum at UCSD, where the theme this year was Healthcare Robotics. We also had several of the other forum speakers visit the lab to see what we're working on. (One of the visitors included Allison Okamura who took the picture here!)
September 13, 2018
Hapkit talk + demo at the CSTA Fall Meeting
Tania gave a talk and Hapkit demo at the San Diego Computer Science Teachers Association Fall Professional Development Meeting. Event was hosted by the CSTA Board and UCSD CREATE.
August 19, 2018
Lab site up and running!
The lab website is officially up and running. Now time to start stocking the lab with prototyping tools and equipment!
