Robots that can sense and act through touch? That is what Aayush Kulkarni, an undergraduate visiting student, taught a robot to do during his internship at RIT. Kulkarni is participating in the International Visiting Research Student Program through RIT Global, which offers students from around the world the opportunity to collaborate with distinguished faculty-researchers from RIT. The international experience is a way for Kulkarni to better understand Eastern and Western perspectives in building robotic technologies, an area he has been interested in since he started college. He also wanted to explore how robots are being used in healthcare. He began work in February with Yangming Lee, a robotics expert in RIT’s College of Engineering Technology who is developing surgical robotics technologies. The two worked to integrate the sense of touch into visual imaging and locational perception to add another feature to the evolving field of surgical robotics. “I found out that tactile sensing was something fairly new; it means giving human sense to robots to identify what it is holding,” said Kulkarni, who is a computer science, engineering, and business systems student at MIT-World Peace University in Puna, India. “This was a whole dream come true situation for me. This is something that every undergraduate student dreams-to build something innovative from scratch. Prof. Lee gave me the opportunity to do this.” Together they created tactile sensor technology that can distinguish between different types of surface environments and can be calibrated to determine appropriate pressure needed to pick up objects. Using an established open-source sensor, the platform they built could be an affordable option compared to larger, established systems. “Integrating haptic feedback allows surgical robots to sense and respond to forces during tissue interaction, such as detecting unexpected resistance or slip-enabling real-time motion adjustments that prevent damage to critical structures,” said Lee, who leads the Robotic Collaboration and Autonomy Lab . “This adaptiveness increases the safety and reliability of autonomous surgical actions, moving the field closer to enabling semi- or fully autonomous procedures in complex, variable clinical environments.” The heart of the project is the neural network and the tactile sensors, and both Lee and Kulkarni built, trained, and refined the system and tested its ability to accurately distinguish real and synthetic objects purely through touch. One of the quirkier tests was in comparing real and fake oranges. The skin of an orange is dimpled, pliant and has varied depth—variables generally found with human skin. A plastic replica orange had similar features but when compared to the real fruit, the sensor was able to distinguish one from the other because it was “taught” to recognize specific characteristics of each item. That ability to distinguish characteristics visually and tactilely could enable a robotics system such as this to distinguish human tissues, specifically those with diseases that are sometimes mistaken for one another and may require blood tests or other invasive methods to diagnose. Robotic diagnoses may be the future, Kulkarni said. “Because if we want more collaborative robots, with similar human qualities, in the future we have to do the steps now.” Before graduation, Kulkarni is required to complete a six-month internship, preferably in an international setting, and must complete or contribute to a capstone project, dissertation, or thesis project. He has written two books on cloud computing, one specifically emphasizing microservices architectures. The book on cloud computing is being used as one of the textbooks in his university. Kulkarni is also in the process of completing his third book, this one on quantum computing. He has a design patent on a quantum cloud gateway device. The six months went quickly for Kulkarni, and he’ll return to India at the end of July. After graduation Kulkarni wants to continue research in these important technological areas and start his own research lab, similar to Lee’s. “When I came here, I got the whole technological perspective because the U.S. is really developed in the technology areas of robotics and computing. I got an opportunity, and I grabbed it,” said Kulkarni. “Getting a diverse approach is always important for the field I am working in. This internship was very important to me.” To learn more Read more about the International Visiting Research Student Program through RIT Global.

RIT graduate Sammy Deol won a yearlong Fulbright Scholarship to attend graduate school in England. He will earn a master’s degree in public health in preparation for medical school.   Deol, who is from Ithaca, N.Y., graduated from RIT this year with a BS degree in biomedical sciences. He plans to become a medical doctor and welcomes the chance to conduct epidemiology and social science research in a foreign country. “Even though I want to practice medicine in the United States one day, I want to have exposure to that aspect of medicine and to have the perspective of a different healthcare system,” Deol said. He enrolled in the University of Birmingham for its proximity to one of the largest Sikh communities in England. Deol, who belongs to the Sikh tradition, is looking to contribute to research interventions addressing high rates of alcohol and drug use among the Sikh population in Birmingham. Deol became interested in the impact of addictive behaviors within a family on children’s emotional-social development and health from working in the research lab led by Stephanie Godleski, RIT associate professor of psychology. Godleski’s addiction research inspired the focus of his graduate work. “I also want to explore my culture more,” Deol said. “I am curious to see the differences between American and British Sikhism, and I think that would be a good opportunity do that, as well.” (While on the staff of the student-run Reporter Magazine, Deol wrote “A Sikh Society,” about the population in Rochester and the gurdwara, or temple, near RIT.) In addition to working with Godleski, Deol attributes his success to professors in the College of Health Sciences and Technology, and the RIT Honors Program for his personal growth and development. Deol took courses in parasitology and human immunology from Bolaji Thomas, professor of biomedical sciences. “He made sure that we strove for excellence and pushed us to go as hard as we could, which I really appreciate. He would remind us that it’s not going to be easy to get where we want to be.” Elizabeth Perry, a senior lecturer in biomedical sciences, stressed the human aspect of medicine in all of her courses, but especially in Biomedical Ethics.  “Dr. Perry would talk about the need for people who go into medicine and healthcare professions to have humility and to be able to understand patients’ problems and where they’re coming from , which I think is really important to consider,” Deol said. The RIT Honors program also shaped Deol’s time at RIT through advanced coursework, complementary learning experiences, travel money to present his research at a conference, and required service work. Volunteering at a local hospice home allowed him to see the patients as people facing their own mortality. “The Honors program encouraged me to pursue those types of opportunities and I think it made me someone who will be a stronger practitioner going into the future.”