LCSR Seminar: Alaa Eldin Abdelaal “An “Additional View” on Human-Robot Interaction and Autonomy in Robot-Assisted Surgery”

When:
November 17, 2021 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
2021-11-17T12:00:00-05:00
2021-11-17T13:00:00-05:00
Where:
https://wse.zoom.us/s/94623801186
Contact:
Ashley Moriarty

Link for Live Seminar

Link for Recorded seminars – 2021/2022 school year

 

Abstract:

Robot-assisted surgery (RAS) has gained momentum over the last few decades with nearly 1,200,000 RAS procedures performed in 2019 alone using the da Vinci Surgical System, the most widely used surgical robotics platform. The current state-of-the-art surgical robotic systems use only a single endoscope to view the surgical field. In this talk, we present a novel design of an additional “pickup” camera that can be integrated into the da Vinci Surgical System. We then explore the benefits of our design for human-robot interaction (HRI) and autonomy in RAS. On the HRI side, we show how this “pickup” camera improves depth perception as well as how its additional view can lead to better surgical training. On the autonomy side, we show how automating the motion of this camera provides better visualization of the surgical scene. Finally, we show how this automation work inspires the design of novel execution models of the automation of surgical subtasks, leading to superhuman performance.

 

Biography:

Alaa Eldin Abdelaal is a PhD candidate at the Robotics and Control Laboratory at the University of British Columbia and a visiting graduate scholar at the Computational Interaction and Robotics Lab at Johns Hopkins University. He holds a B.Sc. in Computer and Systems Engineering from Mansoura University in Egypt and a M.Sc. in Computing Science from Simon Fraser University in Canada. His research interests are at the intersection of autonomy and human-robot interaction for human skill augmentation and decision support with application to surgical robotics. His work is co-advised by Dr. Tim Salcudean and Dr. Gregory Hager. His research has been recognized with the Best Bench-to-Bedside Paper Award at the International Conference on Information Processing in Computer-Assisted Interventions (IPCAI) 2019. He is the recipient of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, the most prestigious scholarship for PhD students in Canada.