The Collaborative Haptics and Robotics in Medicine (CHARM) Lab offers field trips and demos/presentations in local K-12 classrooms and on campus. The CHARM Lab creates robots and human-computer interfaces that use haptics in order to improve human health, safety, and quality of life. The word haptics refers to the sense of touch. Applications of our research include:

• Robot-assisted surgery: We design systems that help surgeons perform surgery less invasively and more accurately by teleoperating surgical instruments that are inserted into the patient’s body through tiny incisions.
• Simulation and training: We create virtual environments to help clinicians perform successful medical interventions using novel, computer-generated models of tissues and organs.
• Rehabilitation: We are developing robotic devices that guide or resist patient movements in order to help them re-learn how to move naturally after stroke.
• Prosthetics: We are testing novel haptic interfaces that aim to provide prosthesis wearers with a sense of touch.
• Teleoperation: We enable exploration of hazardous or remote environments by means of robotic manipulation from a distance.