Current research projects

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• I am Co-Pi on Make me a Bendy Bougie

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   Tracheal intubation is an essential part of many surgical operations. In a small proportion of patients this can be a challenging procedure.  The reasons for intubation difficulties are multifactorial.  In orthopaedics and trauma the commonest and sometimes the sole reason for difficulty is cervical spine immobilisation or a fixed cervical spine.  In cases of trauma the presence of a hard collar exacerbates the difficulties because it restricts mouth opening. It can be removed with inherent risks, opting for manual in line neck stabilisation instead. Despite the proliferation of video laryngoscopy (VDL) devices, their pattern of uptake in clinical practice across the UK has been variable. This is despite their clear incorporation into the Difficult Airway Society’s guidelines which recommend that VDL should be available wherever intubation is performed .  The barriers to poor uptake are unclear and unexplored. More recent studies of VDL have shown that laryngeal view improves using this type of device but this does not always lead to successful intubation: ‘you see that you fail’. 

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Bendy Bougie`s team proposes solutions that involve a novel mechanical mechanism with the flexibility and manoeuvrability of a FO-scope but without the use of optic fibres.  The primary mechanism of bending and length change in our design is based on a cable-driven flexible mechanism using a planar accordion-shape (concertina) in the bending section at the distal end of probe.

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• I am working as Research Associate on RESPONSS (Rehabilitation Technologies Supporting Clinical and Self-management of Spasticity)

The aim of this project is to deliver technologies that support clinical management and self-management of spasticity. The focus of this project is developing technologies that minimise spasticity symptoms in the upper limbs, optimise physical function and providing feedback to the user, enabling self-directed and home-based therapy. 

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I am designing a buckle transducer which is an implanted mechanical device, which is inserted in situ around the tendon, to measure the tendon tension. In orthopaedic biomechanics, much use is made of musculoskeletal models to infer the dynamics forces acting upon bones and musculotendinous units. This allows the study of in vivo structures, using kinematics from gait analysis or portable intertial sensors as inputs to animate the model, together with some external force such as a force plate or hand resistance.

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In addition, I am developing a multi-modal system (ROBIN) for whole arm therapy retraining following a brain, spinal or musculoskeletal injury with a developed neuromodulation. The system will be able able to support multiple exercise design approaches, providing grasp and full upper limb movement over a large workspace whilst sitting or outstanding.

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Past research projects

 

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• I worked as postdoc on "Machine-learning of vision-guided bi-manual grasps, for adaptable autonomous manipulation in manufacturing environments. Sponsored by Cranfield-Loughborough EPSRC."

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     My research focused on developing new kinds of interfaces for human-controlled (tele-operated) robots and planning to enable the robots to execute grasps and manipulative actions autonomously. My research focused on implementation, demonstration and evaluation of a variety of autonomous, visionguided manipulation capabilities, using a dual-arm robot. Initially, symmetric coordinated bi-manual manipulation based on kinematic tracking algorithm was implemented on the robot to enable a master-slave manipulation system. We demonstrate the efficacy of this approach with a human-robot collaboration experiment, where a human operator moves the master arm along arbitrary trajectories and the slave arm automatically follows the master arm while maintaining a constant relative pose between the two end-effectors.

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