ICS Masters Thesis and Capstone Project Topics

All projects described below will be conducted in collaboration with the Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory at the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Contact: Kyungim Baek (kyungim(at)hawaii.edu)

or Stephan Fabel (sfabel(at)hawaii.edu)

Ÿ Thesis Topic (Plan A)

Design and Evaluation of Human-Computer Interfaces in a Mimimally-Invasive Robotic Surgery Setup

Human-Computer Interaction is a broad field of research, and especially applicable in a telerobotic environment, where transparency and immersion of the user into the working environment of the robot plays an important part of the robot control experience. In surgical robotics, this immersion is especially important as the surgeon needs to perform the operation without the feel of touch and with only limited scope of view. The object of this master thesis is to explore several options of enhancing the user interaction experience by using visual, haptic and audial cues to augment the user in controlling the robot. The student is then to design and build test cases for evaluation by the surgeons of Queen’s Medical Center and other facilities on the island and to compare the results.

Ÿ Capstone Project Topics (Plan B)

1. Implementation of Robot Control in Real-Time Linux

The main task of this project is to port existing robot control software from Windows 2000 to real-time Linux (Linux-RT) based on the free Ubuntu Linux Distribution. This includes the GUI-based front end as well as possible driver implementation for the USB haptic master consoles. To conduct this project, strong C/C++ programming skills are required and Linux familiarity would be helpful. Student must have willingness to learn about real-time operating systems and Linux implementation. Suggested libraries are Boost and wxWidgets or Qt.

2. Implementation of 3D Simulation of Minimally-Invasive Surgery Robot

The CLSR/LER robot developed at the Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory is a complete robot for minimally-invasive laparoscopic surgery. In order to evaluate and visualize movement of the robot(s), a simulator of the robotic system is to be programmed in C++. This simulator will be controlled by two haptic master consoles (Omni Phantom) and displayed on a HD flat-screen television monitor. The simulation software should run on Linux, but a multi-OS implementation would be an added value. Suggested C++ libraries are OGRE, ODE and Boost. Strong C++ programming skills and background experience in OpenGL are desired for this project. Student must have willingness to learn about Linux.