Contact Information

Tania Morimoto
Graduate Student
Mechanical Engineering Dept.
Stanford University

CHARM Laboratory
424 Panama Mall, Bldg. 560
Stanford, CA 94305
taniakm@stanford.edu

Education

B.S. Engineering as recommended by the Department of Mechanical Engineering
Minors in Biomedical Engineering and Japanese
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
June 2012

Research

Patient-specific Robot Design

Robot Guided Sheaths (RoGS) for Percutaneous Access to the Pediatric Kidney

Despite the enhanced dexterity, vision, and control offered by robot-assisted minimally invasive surgical (RMIS) systems, the large size and high cost, as well as the inability to move in a highly curved path, limit the effectiveness of current commercial systems and motivate the development of another approach. Procedure- and patient-specific (i.e., personalized) robot design would allow for optimization of operations compared to the current, generic robots designed to perform many different procedures. The need for personalized surgical robots is particularly apparent when considering specialized groups of patients, such as pediatric or obese patients, whose anatomical differences may prove current template systems to be inadequate. We propose to use robot-guided sheaths (RoGS) consisting of pre-curved tubes and steerable needles to provide surgical access to locations deep within the body. We are currently focusing on the patient-specific design of the pre-curved tube portion of a robot-guided sheath for access to kidney stones in pediatric patients.

Design of a low-cost, educational haptic device

Hapkit: an open-hardware, low-cost haptic device for simulation of virtual environments

Hapkit is an open-hardware haptic device designed to be very low-cost and easy to assemble. Hapkit allows users to input motions and feel programmed forces in one degree of freedom. This enables interactive simulation of virtual environments that represent realistic physics (such as springs and dampers) and creative new touch sensations (like textures and buttons). The Hapkit can be assembled using household tools, costs less than $50 for all components, including the microcontroller board, and is easily set up and programmed by novices. In Fall 2013 we will piloted the Hapkit in a new online class on haptics; this is the ideal topic on which to launch a laboratory course within the current online learning revolution.

Project website: http://hapkit.stanford.edu/index.html

Publications

Conference

T. K. Morimoto, M. H. Hsieh and A. M. Okamura (2013) Robot-Guided Sheaths (RoGS) for Percutaneous Access to the Pedatric Kidney: Patient-Specific Design and Preliminary Results. In ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference.

T. K. Morimoto, A. Miller, P. Blikstein and A. M. Okamura (2013) The Haptic Paddle: A Low-Cost Haptic Device for Online Education. In Open Hardware Summit.