Intravascular micro-surgical skills Simulators

Prof. Toshio Fukuda
Nagoya University, Japan

Abstract:

Medical doctor needs training to improve better. Thus the more sophisticated simulator systems will be required to improve skill by hardware and/or virtual reality technologies. In this talk, the intravascular micro surgery system is shown with the blood vessel simulator. This simulator is made by micro-fabrication technology from the CT/MRI image, where the friction of the simulator model against the surgery catheter is made almost similar to that of the human body. Medical doctors can improve their intravascular surgical skills by this patient specific model and convince themselves of the better surgery, before the medical operation. The photoelasticity can give a quantitative evaluation method for the medical skill. On the other hand, manufacturers of the catheter devices can also use this model for their research and development without experiments using animals. Thus, this simulator is helpful to patients, medical doctors and manufacturers. Then the same process is applied for making scaffolds for the tissue engineering in the regenerated medicine. It will be a better biomaterial, which will help the tissue engineering in practice.

Biography

Graduated from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan in 1971 and received a Master of Engineering degree and the Doctor of Engineering degree both from the University of Tokyo, in 1973 and 1977, respectively. At present, he is a professor in the Department of Micro System Engineering and Department of Mechano-Informatics and Systems, Nagoya University, Japan. He is mainly engaged in the research fields of intelligent robotic systems, self-organizing systems, micro robotics, robotic systems under hostile environments, bio-robotic systems, neuromorphic intelligent control, fuzzy control, control of mechanical systems and technical diagnosis.

He was the vice president of IEEE’s Industrial Electronics Society (1990- ). He is the member of the administrative committees in IEEE’s Robotics and Automation Society and IEEE’s Industrial Electronics Society. He was the publication chairman (1991– 1992) and the secretary of IEEE’s Neural Network Council (1992–1993). He was chairman of the Division of Robotics and Mechatronics of Japan Society of Mechanical Engineering (JSME), chairman of the Technical Committee of Robotics in Society of Instrument and Control Engineer (SICE) and chairman of many other technical committees. He was the president of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (1998–1999). He was elected as director of the IEEE Division X, Systems and Control. He was the founding general chairman of the IEEE International Workshop on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) held in Tokyo (1988) and Program Chairman of IJCNN '91-Singapore (November 1991).He was the general chairman of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (May 1995), the program co-chairman of the Fuzz-IEEE Conference (March 1995), the general chairman of the IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation (ICEC'96, May 1996), and a steering member of many other international conferences. He was the general chairman of Second Conference of Virtual Reality Society of Japan (September 1997). He was the general chairman of the International Conference on Industrial Electronics, Control and Instrumentation-2000 (IECON-2000, October 2000). Currently, he is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Micromechatronics (2000- ), Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence (JACI) and IEEE Nanotechnology Council President (2002-). He was editor-in-chief of the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (2000-2002). He has received many awards, such as the Contribution Award from the Robotics and Mechatronics Division of JSME (1995); Best Paper Award of ICEC'96 and Best Paper Award of IECON'96; City of Grenoble Medal (1997); IEEE Eugene Mittelmann Achievement Award (1997); Banki Donat Medal from PolytechnicUniversity of Budapest, Hungary (1997); Medal from City of Sartillo, Mexico (1998);

IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000); IEEE Fellow (1995); and SICE Fellow (1995).

Design & Control Integration

Kamal Youcef-Toumi
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
USA

Abstract

The drive for higher performance, reliability and satisfying stringent specifications push towards the need for systematic design approaches. It is well known that considering design and control methods separately often compromises the achievable performance of the closed-loop system.  On the other hand, systems-based synthesis methodologies can remove the limiting factors in performance.  In addition, many new applications, particularly in the nanotechnology and biotechnology areas, require severe specifications. Such applications include high speed and high precision robotic systems, alignment of tool and sample in stamping processes, and precise positioning of wafer steppers in semi-conductor manufacturing. Among the critical functional parameters, one can name high resolution, large range, high load-capacity, and high bandwidth. Therefore, high performance systems and particularly multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary systems require a systematic design and control approach.

This presentation first covers few applications and their requirements to illustrate system complexities. Design and control approaches are then reviewed. The integrated design and control approach is presented through an atomic force microscope case study for ultra high-speed imaging. We show how design topologies can be generated for multi-degree-of-freedom positioning and alignment flexure-based mechanisms. We also present ways of mitigating the effects of disturbances as well as those arising from cross-coupling and parasitic error motions, and how the control system design is iterated over system topologies and not just parameters within a selected topology. Finally, the hardware design, control and experimental results are presented to illustrate the approaches.

Biography

Professor Kamal Youcef-Toumi is with the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) which he joined in 1985. Professor Youcef-Toumi earned his advanced degrees in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and his undergraduate Mechanical Engineering degree is from the University of Cincinnati. Professor Youcef-Toumi's research has focused primarily on design and control theory and its applications to dynamic systems. Throughout his research career he has strived to maintain a balance between theoretical aspects and practical applications. Professor Youcef-Toumi has served as a consultant for several companies including the EDO Corporation, Varian Radiation Division, Axiam Corporation, AT&T Bell Laboratories, The Gillette Company, Daewoo Corporation and TEKES, the Technology Development Center of Finland. Professor Youcef-Toumi teaches courses in the fields of dynamic systems, modelling, simulation and controls, robotics, mechatronics and precision machine design, analysis and controls. He has supervised a vast range of graduate, post graduate, doctoral and post doctoral activities. In 1987 he was selected as a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator and in the following year became one of three recipients of Carl Richard Soderberg Career Development Chairs given by MIT's School of Engineering. He has also served on several professional committees of the National Science Foundation. He is the author of over 80 publications, has served as editor on several symposia proceedings and has been an invited lecturer at over 60 seminars at companies and universities throughout the world.

 

Vision Based Guidance for Micro Air Vehicles

Prof. Randy Beard
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Brigham Young University

Abstract
This talk will focus on guidance and control for small micro air vehicles (<five foot wingspan) using EO/IR cameras.  We will discuss geo-location of moving ground targets, emphasizing the need to keep the target in the field-of-view of the camera.  We will also describe algorithms and results for vision-based precision landing, and for vision based collision avoidance.  The collision avoidance algorithms use a three tier architecture divided according to time to collision.  In the near time horizon (<3seconds) a reactive scheme is used that forces the obstacle to the edge of the field-of-view.  In the mid-time horizon, a body frame local path planner is used to maneuver around the obstacles.  We will discuss conditions under which collision avoidance is guaranteed.

Biography
Randal W. Beard received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, in 1991, the M.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1993, the M.S. degree in mathematics in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1995, all from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y.  Since 1996, he has been with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, where he is currently a professor.  In 1997 and 1998, he was a Summer Faculty Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.  In 2006-2007 he was a National Council Research Fellow at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Munitions Directorate, Eglin AFB, FL.   His research interests include guidance and control, autonomous systems, and multiple vehicle coordination and control with particular emphasis on micro air vehicles. 

Rotorcraft UAV Flight Control Technologies: Past, Present and Future

Dr. Russell Enns
Boeing/McDonnell Douglas Mesa, AZ

Abstract

While the last two decades have witnessed the advent of the information age, the next twenty years promises to be defined by the wide scale utilization of robotics.  Forecast by science fiction writers for more than fifty years, the potential for society truly entering the robotics age is now upon us with the development of several key technologies including low cost, low power, highly capability processors and memory and high speed, high accuracy motor and actuator technology.  While robots are typically thought of as humanoid in the vein of Isaac Asimov and others, they can take many forms.  They can be extremely small to extremely large and can serve an infinite number of functions.  Their size and function, however, dramatically affects the underlying design, a point lost among the science fiction writers and even many researchers today.  For example, while Asimov concerned himself with the underlying laws of robots as it affects humans, his laws, or requirements as we refer to them, did not explicitly address their reliability and failure modes.  The required reliability is a driving factor into whether a particular robot will find its way into servicing society.  This presentation discusses the underlying design of robotics technology for one particular function, transportation of people and cargo.   More specifically, we discuss the types of robots currently being pursued for transportation purposed, their specific tasks, underlying designs, required reliability and issues associated with it, safety concerns, and enabling technologies, both already developed and still required.

Biography

Dr. Russel Enns professional experience since 1993 – 2009  is with Boeing/McDonnell Douglas Mesa, AZ. He served as the Associate Technical Fellow - Advanced Fire and Flight Control Systems.  He served as a team leader  for various next generation rotorcraft flight controls R&D and pre-production programs. He was member of the Rotorcraft Technology Roadmap Team.  He is responsible for system design, software design, simulation and modeling of both real-time and off-line systems used in new helicopter flight and fire control technologies.  Also he served as senior engineer on the VITAL fly-by-wire program, on both system and software designs, qualification testing and hydraulic system validation, upper controls geometry modeling, and fiber optic communication integration.  He served as  Associate Editor - Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics, American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics since 2006 – 2009.

Micro and nano scale sensors.

Dr. Taher Saif
Professor, Mechanical Science and Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA

Abstract:

We developed a MEMS sensor to study thin film material samples. We applied the sensor to test Aluminum and Gold films with grain sizes 20-200 nm and with thicknesses 50-200 nm under uniaxial tension. The experiments reveal, for the first time that metals with 50-100 nm grains, when deformed plastically, can recover all of the plastic strain under macroscopic stress-free condition. This recovery shows three distinct activation energies. We hypothesize that this unusual behavior is a result of the combined effect of grain size and in-homogeneity in the microstructure (grain size and orientation variations). During loading relatively larger grains deform plastically while smaller grains accommodate the strain elastically. Upon unloading, the elastically deformed grains, in order to reduce their strain energy, induce reverse plasticity in the larger grains leading to time dependent strain recovery [1]. Thus, nano grained metals show the potential of making mechanical components that can self heal after impact or indentation.

Memory and learning in animals is mediated by neurotransmission at the synaptic junctions (end point of axons). Neurotransmitters are carried by synaptic vesicles, which cluster at the junctions, ready to be dispatched for transmission. A central dogma in neuroscience is that, clustering is the result of a complex biochemical signaling process. We show, using nano scale force sensors and fruit fly (Drosophila) embryo nervous system, that mechanical tension in axons is essential for clustering. Without tension, clustering disappears, but reappears with application of tension. Nature maintains a rest tension of 1nN in axons. The experiment reveals, for the first time, a link between mechanical force in neurons and the process of memory and learning in animals [2].

Biography:

 Dr. Taher Saif received his BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and Washington State University respectively in 1984 and 1986. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University in 1993. He worked on MEMS as a Post Doctoral Associate in Electrical Engineering and the National Nanofabrication Facility at Cornell University during 1993-97. He joined the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign during 1997. Currently, he is the Gutgsell Professor in the Department. His current research includes mechano-sensitivity of single living cells, and mechanics of nano materials.