Pint of Robotics: Gerardo Loza Galindo, Andy Blight, and James Avery

Speaker 1: Gerardo Loza Galindo (STORM Lab, IRASS, School of Computing, University of Leeds)

Bio: Gerardo obtained his Bachelor's degree in Bionics Engineering in 2018 from the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico. During his time there, he had the opportunity to collaborate on research projects with Mexican institutions such as the National Council of Science and Technology and the Research Center for Applied Science and Advanced Technology. Later, he spent a couple of years in industry: first as a field service engineer for Siemens Healthineers Mexico, and later as a software developer for the Kaiser Permanente consortium. Currently, Gerardo is part of the CDT in AI for Medical Diagnosis and Care program at the University of Leeds. Under the supervision of Professor Pietro Valdastri in the STORM Lab and Doctor Sharib Ali in the AIMS group, he is carrying out his PhD on the use of artificial intelligence to inform autonomy in robotic minimally invasive surgery.

Title: Characterisation of tissue and surgical tools using machine learning to inform autonomy in Robotic Minimally Invasive Surgery

Abstract: In this talk, I will introduce myself, describe my research area and the outline of my PhD project. This project considers that using a Robotic Minimally Invasive System (RMIS) in the surgical scenario has shown excellent potential to generate a self-aware system since it supplies the mediums and environment to analyse data and describe the scenario strategically into spatial representations. Upgrading to a self-aware system could bring the opportunity to perform tasks automatically and, consequently, reduce the workload of surgeons, expedite the completion of the procedures, and increase the availability of these resources for more people. Efforts are centred on finding an effective path to extract information from the surgical data and use it in the automation of surgical tasks. Taking this perspective into consideration, I will present our approach to solving tasks such as detection, segmentation, tracking and depth estimation.

Speaker 2: Andy Blight (Real Robotics Lab, School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds).

Bio: Andy wrote his first program on a Commodore Pet in 1979 and hasn’t stopped coding since.  He spent over 25 years developing software in several industries, starting as a junior programmer, and working his way up to a Principal Software Engineer running a team of 28 engineers across two countries.  I’m currently a Robotics Software Technician in the Real Robotics lab at Leeds having fun building robots and flying drones.

Title: Mucking around in sewers with robots. 

Abstract: The Pipebots project has been running for just over 5 years and during that time, I have been helping the team build robots that can autonomously explore the sewage network to find and record defects of various shapes and sizes.  This talk shows the development of the Pipebot robots and describes some of the lessons learnt whilst developing and testing these robots.  If you are lucky, I might even bring one or two along.

Speaker 3: James Avery

Bio: James received MEng in Acoustical Engineering at the ISVR at the University of Southampton in 2010 and completed his PhD in Biomedical Engineering at University College London in 2015. He then continued his research into Electrical Impedance Tomography methods for brain imaging as EPSRC Doctoral Research Fellow, before joining the Hamlyn Centre at Imperial College London as a Postdoc developing optical and tactile sensors. In 2020 he was awarded an Imperial College Research Fellowship to develop inflatable structures with integrated multimodal sensing for MIS. He is currently settling into a Lectureship in the STORM Lab with Prof. Valdastri, developing new surgical sensing technologies.  When not working James is probably playing Stardew Valley with his kids, in the mosh pit, or getting a treat from the shops.