Category: News

The 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) took place in Hamburg, Germany during September 28 to October 02, 2015. The theme of the 2015 IROS conference was “Gateway to the Era of Robots” with the goal to create a variety of opportunities and formats for a lively exchange among participants and an platform to connect robotics academia and industry. Quite a lot innovative results on various robotics topics are presented during the conference and plenty of companies have demonstrated exciting new products during the exhibition.

We have presented three papers during the conference, including

1. Keyu Wu, Liao Wu and Hongliang Ren, Motion planning of continuum tubular robots based on features extracted from statistical atlas.

2. Zheng Li, Haoyong Yu, Hongliang Ren, Philip W.Y.Chiu and Ruxu Du, A Novel Constrained Tendon-driven Serpentine Manipulator.

3. Yanjie Chen, Zheng Li, Wenjun Xu, Yaonan Wang and Hongliang Ren, Minimum Sweeping Area Motion Planning for Flexible Serpentine Surgical Manipulator with Kinematic Constraints.

Out of 72 articles in the same issue, our paper on flexible robotic sensing, entitled “Electromagnetic Positioning for Tip Tracking and Shape Sensing of Flexible Robots”, was  featured on the cover of IEEE Sensor Journal,  (Volume:15 , Issue: 8, Issue Date: Aug. 2015).

For more information about the paper, please check http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7088545 and Cover.pdf

This year, the 14th edition of the IEEE/RAS-EMBS International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR 2015) was hold in Singapore and our paper titled ‘A Preliminary Study of Force Estimation Based on Surface EMG: Towards Neuromechanically Guided Soft Oral Rehabilitation Robot’ was selected for poster presentation.

During the recent IEEE ICIA/ICAL 2015 conference, we presented two papers including:

1. Keyu Wu, Liao Wu, Chwee Ming Lim, Hongliang Ren. Model-free Image Guidance for Intelligent Tubular Robots with Pre-clinical Feasibility Study: Towards Minimally Invasive Trans-orifice Surgery.
2. Wenjun Xu, Roslyn Pei Li Foong, Hongliang Ren. Marker Based Shape Tracking of A Flexible Serpentine Manipulator.

Besides, the first paper also won the Best Paper Finalist award.

More information about the ICIA conference: The IEEE ICIA/ICAL 2015 joint conference (IEEE International Conference on Information and Automation & IEEE International Conference on Automation and Logistics) was held from August 8 to 10, 2015 in the old town of Lijiang, located in the beautiful Yunnan province of China. The IEEE ICIA/ICAL 2015 joint conference provided the participants with excellent technical and social programs. Papers with high quality were presented to demonstrate original research results and innovations in all aspects of information, automation, logistics, and their applications.

The 7th IEEE International Conference on Cybernetics and Intelligent Systems (CIS) and the 7th IEEE International Conference on Robotics, Automation and Mechatronics (RAM) was held in 15-17 July, 2015 at Angkor Wat, Cambodia. The conferences brought the international community of researchers, practitioners and students a great opportunity to discuss the latest advancements and future directions in the field of automatic control. Participants shared their research progresses and experience, built friendships and had lots of fun during the 3 days.

Our presented papers include:

1. Zheng Li, Feiling Jan, Hongliang Ren and Haoyong Yu, A Novel Tele-operated Flexible Surgical Arm with Optimal Trajectory tracking Aiming for Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery
2. Shen Shen, Shuang Song, Jingling Zhu, Max Q-H Meng, Jun Li and Hongliang Ren, Preliminary Design towards a Magnetic Actuated Drug Delivery System
3. Rui Ma, Hui Cao, Shuzhi Sam Ge and Hongliang Ren, Kernel neighbor density with parallel computing mechanism for anomaly detection algorithm
4. Hui Cao, Bo Zhou, Shuzhi Sam Ge and Hongliang Ren, Towards Low-cost Contactless High-Temperature Estimation Based on Colorimetric Fusion

The 11th Asian Conference on Computer Aided Surgery (ACCAS2015) was held in Singapore on July 9-11, 2015 at National University of Singapore. During the conference, international academic researchers, clinical scientists, surgeons and industrial partners presented and discussed their key innovations in the fields of surgery, engineering, informatics and healthcare. Our team presented our recent research outcomes and demonstrated the research platforms in our lab to the invited scholars from UK, China & Japan.

The presentations from our group:

• Ang, B. & Ren, H. Towards Virtual Operation using Leap Motion and Vibrotactile Haptic Feedback
• Li, Z.; Oo, M. Z.; Thang, V. D.; Nalam, V.; Kofidis, T.; Ren, H. & Yu, H. Design and Testing of a Novel Flexible Endoscope
• Loh, K. T.; Ren, H. & Li, J. Tracking Magnetic Particles under Ultrasound Imaging using Contrast-Enhancing Microbubbles
• Tan, B.; Wu, L. & Ren, H. Prototype Development of a Handheld Tubular Curvilinear Robot for Minimally Invasive Surgery

Our team had a BBQ party at Kent Vale on Sunday.  We broiled various meat, vegetables and seafood together and had a lot of fun.

The NNI-SINAPSE Ideas forum was held on 10 July 2015 and the list of the presentations for the meeting is as follows:

Presenters:

• Prof. Nitish (SINAPSE)

o   Title: Electroceuticals – Implantable Neural Interfaces for Visceral Nerves and to Treat Disorders.

• Dr. Sharon Low (NNI)

o   Title: Tumour Treating Fields for glioblastoma -an SG50 ideal

• Dr. Hongliang Ren (SINAPSE)

o   Title: Neurosurgical Robotics and Navigation with Intelligence and Compliance.

• Dr. Eddie Tan (NNI)

o   Title: Photoacoustic imaging: from bench to bedside

This year, WACBE World Congress on Bioengineering 2015 (WACBE 2015), was held in Singapore, from 6 to 8 July 2015. Many biomedical engineers from over the world were brought together to share their experiences and opinions on the development of biomedical engineering.

During the conference, Xinquan, our PhD student, presented the paper titled ‘Towards A Micro Pneumatic Actuator with Large Bending Deformation For Medical Interventions’ and Wenjun, another PhD student from our group, presented the paper titled ‘Indirect Distal End Force Sensing for a Tendon Driven Flexible Transoral Surgical Manipulator’.

Our project on intelligent tube robot was invited to demo at the  COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH MEETING WITH NUH NEUROLOGY AND NEUROSURGERY at SINAPSE this Friday.