A blog dedicated to the news and achievements of the University of Washington's BioRobotics Lab
We are proud to announce that two of our summer researchers, Matt Ehlert and Alex Franke, will be presenting their research at the CSNE Summer Program Research Symposium. Their poster session is 1-3pm at CSNE (see flyer for more details). Congrats to both of them on their fabulous research!
When VICE Motherboard visited us last month to talk about surgical hacking, they also took some time to learn about the lab’s work on neural security and brain hacking. Several articles are now available:
VICE Motherboard: How Hackers Could Get Inside Your Head With ‘Brain Malware’
Daily Mail UK: Hackers could get inside your BRAIN: Experts warn of growing threat from monitoring and controlling neural signals
Naked Security by Sophos: How hacking brainwaves could reveal our deeply guarded secrets
This research is by Tamara Bonaci, Katherine Pratt, and Howard Chizeck.
Now that we’re in the full swing of summer quarter we’re looking back and highlighting some of the accomplishments of spring quarter and welcoming our summer research students.
Publications:
C. Matlack; H. Chizeck; C. T. Moritz, “Empirical Movement Models for Brain Computer Interfaces,” in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering , vol.PP, no.99, pp.1-1 doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2016.2584101
Awards:
Katherine Pratt was awarded as a member of the inaugural Husky 100 class. This award recognizes 100 individuals from across the UW campuses for work in and out of the classroom. Read more from the department here.
Summer Students:
We are super excited to have high school and college students from UW and beyond working with us in the lab this summer:
Hannah is a rising sophomore here at the University of Washington. She’s worked in the lab previously, and is spending the summer working with Andrew Haddock on haptic diagnostic tools for patients with Parkinson’s Disease.
Matt Ehlert is going to be a junior this fall at the University of New Mexico. He’s working with Katherine Pratt and Howard Chizeck on BCI security.
Gabriel Solia is a visiting masters student from Brazil. His work includes the Microsoft Hololens, and he’s working with Sam Burden and Ryan Robinson.
Jane Yi is a high school student working with Gabriel, Sam, and Ryan on the Microsoft Hololens project.
Anisha Uppugonduri is a sophomore here at the University of Washington, and is working with Maggie Thompson.
Nishi Kaza is a rising junior at Skyline High School. He’s working on the touchless touchscreen project.’
Magena Fura (not pictured) is working with us through the CSNE Research Experience for Undergraduates program. She’s working with Maggie Thompson.
Alex Franke (not pictured) is working with us through the CSNE Research Experience for Undergraduates program. He’s working on neuroethics with Tim Brown.
UPDATE 7/27/2016
VICE Motherboard has posted several more articles following the YouTube video originally posted. They are part of a larger series, The Hacks We Can’t See.
Why We Should Be a Little Paranoid About Hackers Messing With Robot Surgeons
The Internet of Things Will Turn Large-Scale Hacks into Real World Disasters
Original Post
Victoria Turk of VICE Motherboard interviewed BRL investigators Howard Chizeck, Blake Hannaford, and Tamara Bonaci on the security of teleoperated surgical robots. Tamara demonstrates to Victoria what it would feel like to operate the Raven II surgical robot while it’s under a denial of service attack. You can read VICE Motherboard’s article here, and you can read Tamara’s paper on the subject here.
Congrats to the recent BRL graduate, Jeffrey Herron! He completed his PhD on closed loop deep brain stimulation with Dr Howard Chizeck. He is now working at Medtronic in Minneapolis, MN.
Ever been curious what the lab looks like or want to know more about our research? Check out the video of our Facebook Live session, hosted with IEEE. We had a great time showing off our work!
We have been excited to host several groups of students over the past few weeks, both in our lab and elsewhere on campus. In May we were excited to have several students from the Discovery Lab of Ellensburg and the Robotics and Invention Club from Foster High School in Tukwila visit. Special thanks to Kristi Morgansen and her graduate students for also sharing their autonomous underwater vehicles (top photo), and the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering. We also recently demonstrated our haptic and surgical robots to students with Time to Invent from Northgate (bottom photo).
One of the teachers who worked in BRL last summer through the CSNE Research Experience for Teachers, Larry Bencivengo, was recently featured by the Mercer Island School District for his work in developing an artificial neural network curriculum. Larry and fellow teacher Paul Zimmer worked on haptics in addition to their curriculums. Larry also received a grant through the Partners in Science program and will spend the next two summers doing research with the departments of medicine and ophthalmology (read more about that here). Congrats, Larry!
The haptic underwater robotics spinoff BluHaptics has received an NSF Phase II Small Business Innovative Research grant. The $747,179 grant will fund the company’s remotely operated vehicle software. Geekwire profiled the company and its research in an online article. More information can also be found on the BluHaptics website.
The Raven surgical robot was featured in episode 5 of “Heartbeat”, NBC’s new medical drama. Check out the episode here.
Also, BRL’s spinoff company Applied Dexterity took Raven to NASA as a part of efforts to take the surgical robot to the International Space Station. Applied Dexterity talked about their visit here.