SMART Lab goes for a trek

On the last weekend SMART lab went for a trek in the scenic Margalla mountains of Islamabad. The trek started in the morning around 9:30 and it took two hours of walking and climbing and running and eating and fun to reach the top . On the way up we had the most tasty kinnooos!

 

After the trek to the top we had a sumptuous brunch with Tikkas and parathas!!! After that Ahsan treated us to a very nice Tea as a fine for not attending the lab meetings !

Indian CBI Website hacked along with 270 others

http://www.pakalertpress.com/2010/12/04/indias-domestic-spy-agency-cbi-hacked/

Pakistan Zindabad :D

Brain Controlled Robot

Game emulation within a game, now this is creative

http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/15/chip-8-emulation-comes-to-half-life-2-you-can-finally-retire-yo/

Universal Coffee-filled Robotic Hand

http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2010/11/universal_coffeefilled_robot_hand.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Medgadget+%28Medgadget%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

SRI's electroadhesion tech enables new army of wall-climbing robots

http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/10/sris-electroadhesion-tech-enables-new-army-of-wall-climbing-rob/

Pictures from Day Two (Hands On SOFA)

Some Pictures from the Surgical Workshop

 

Day One

SMART lab submits abstracts at 2010 Africa Telehealth Confernce

Read here...

http://www.texastelehealthtech.com/conference-abstracts/98-role-of-simulators-in-surgical-training.html

and here..


http://www.texastelehealthtech.com/conference-abstracts/97-training-system-for-laparoscopic-and-robotic-surgery.html

Final Day Surgical Workshop

Finally the two days workshop has come to an end with great learning experience and feed back from the participants. The second day's session started with an in-depth introduction to SOFA by Mr.Shamyl. After revealing the SOFA architecture and its specialty in field of medical simulation, the participants were provided handouts for performing basic exercises on SOFA modeler. Within a short duration of an hour in lab, the participants learned to model a 3d liver with proper collision and simulation. In the concluding ceremony Mr.Shamyl and Dr.Muddassir assured the participants that in near future SMART lab will organize another workshop of same kind but on a much larger scale and covering the advanced functionality of SOFA.


Zaheer Mukhtar
(Software Engineer)
Project TSRS, SMART Lab

First Day of Surgical Workshop

As promised, SMART Lab started its two days workshop on Laparoscopic surgery, Laparoscopic simulator and the challenges involved in its development. The first day started with an introduction to "commercial surgical simulators" by Zaheer Mukhtar followed by a talk from Dr.Muddassir on challenges in Laparoscopic simulator development.After the Q&A session, Mr.Shamyl further elaborated the SMART Lab's progress and aims for future development plans on their TSRS  project. The second day will be dedicated to a hands-on training session of SOFA (Simulator Open Framework Architecture) in Tech Lab.

Here are some pictures from the event…. More to follow

Contributed by Zaheer Mukhtar (RA, SMART Lab)  

SMART Lab's workshop on Surgical Simulators

SMART Lab is organizing a workshop on Surgical Simulators on 18th and 19th October, 2010. The workshop will start at 17:30 on both the days. The idea of the workshop is to benefit from expertise of the different members working on the project titled "Development of a Tele-Surgical Training Robot and Simulator" (TSRS).

The following is the plan of the workshop

A workshop on Surgical Simulators

Plan of Workshop

Day 1
Monday Oct 18th 2010
Venue: Seminar Hall
17:30 – 18:00	Commercial Surgical Simulators: An overview by Zaheer Mukhtar
18:00 – 18:20	Prayer Time and Coffee Break
18:20 – 19:00	Challenges in Developing Simulators by Dr M. Muddassir Malik
19:00 – 20:00	Discussion: Architecture of a New Surgical Simulator by Muddassir Malik and Shamyl Bin Mansoor

Day 2
Tuesday Oct 19th, 2010: (Lab Sessions)
Venue: SMART Lab, Graduate Research Complex
17:30 – 18:00	An overview of "Simulation Open Framework Architecture" (SOFA) by Shamyl Bin Mansoor
18:00 – 18:20	Prayer Time and Coffee Break
18:20 – 20:00	Hands On Lab Session on SOFA conducted by Shamyl, Muddassir and Zaheer Exercise 1 Understanding SOFA Modeler and Simulator o Modeling a particle in a gravitational field o Loading a visual model in SOFA and mapping to a mechanical model Exercise 2 Modeling object collisions under a planar force field Exercise 3 Modeling a 3 dimensional object along with bio-mechanical properties

Exploring Technology and Having Fun at SMART Lab – Video demo

 

Here is a demo of AI’s we’ve developed! AI’s are implemented on Balanced Annihilation Mod, using Spring Engine, Stay tuned for more information :)

Naveed Tahir

Exploring Technology and Having Fun at SMART Lab – Part 2

After we explored in great depth what we could do by programming AI’s in the spring engine, we decided to move towards creating maps for the engine. As our first task, we decided on building a map for our own SEECS campus building.

Fig 1 SEECS Campus

This experience was fun, and educating as well. While making the map, we learnt how to use different software such as GIMP (an open source image editor) and Photoshop and paint as well. Here is a close view of SEECS fountain area.

Fig 2 Fountain Area

It was interesting to create a map of our building and then play battles on our campus area :). Here is a picture:

 

Stay tuned for more interesting stuff coming up!

-- Naveed Tahir

SMART Lab project in UTrade Magazine

http://www.theutrade.com/eMagazine/07-2010/inner-pages/Technology-Review.aspx

SMART lab’s visit to National Engineering Robotics Contest, E&ME College, NUST

Recently students from SMART lab visited the National Engineering Robotics Contest at College of Electrical & Mechanical Engineering, NUST. This is one of the oldest and most popular robotics contests of Pakistan. The idea is to develop an autonomous line following robot that is supposed to perform certain tasks. This year the tasks were to pot some pegs in pre-destined locations. More details are available here on the competition website…

Here are some pictures from the visit..

 

Exploring Technology and Having Fun at SMART Lab

I don’t know if you have ever frequented this blog or not, but if you have, you have probably wondered how exciting things can really get at SMART Lab. Fortunately, we at SMART Lab are lucky enough to be working on something really exciting, which we’d like to share with you all.

Fig1. Balanced Annihilation on the SPRING Engine

A few weeks ago a few students started working on different aspects of game development, and as they would testify, it is one of the most exciting things that they have done this summer. This project involves making use of a popular gaming engine to play around with Strategy Games.

 

Fig2. Our own AI with Balanced Annihilation

Internees got to select a strategy game of their choice, and they chose Balanced Annihilation (created on the Spring engine). After playing around with the engine for a while, they settled on programming AI’s for the game. This was fascinating because the internees not only got the chance to play the game but also teach the computer how to play according to the strategies that they have created.

Fig3. Another AI with SPRING Engine

If you find game development / AI interesting, please do drop by at the SMART Lab, and we’ll even show you a demo of the AI’s we’ve developed! Stay tuned for more information :)

- Afnan Fahim

SMART Lab students will enjoy this!

And so would the faculty ;)

Video, courtesy of S.R and A.A.S

Tele-Surgical Training Robot System

Our project covered by allaboutroboticsurgery.com website.

Read Here

SMART lab Project blogged by Imran H Khan

SMART lab's funded project blogged on Imran H Khan's blog.
Read here

SMART Lab's Project in THE NEWS