Dr. Jindong Tan
Associate Professor and Associate Department Head
UT Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering
March 6, 2015, 2:30 – 3:30 PM
410 John D. Tickle Engineering Building
Dr. Jindong Tan received the Ph.D degree from Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, in 2002, in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is currently an associate professor and the associate department head in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA. He has been an assistant/associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan Technological University during 2002-2012. His research interests include body sensor networks, biomedical signal processing, mobile robotics and mobile sensing. Dr. Tan has 34 archival journal publications and 80 refereed conference proceedings in these research areas. His research is funded by NSF, DoD, and ORNL.
Talk Abstract: This talk will first discuss the recent development in wearable inertial and visual sensors which enables human motion capture and tracking in free living environments, with applications in blind navigation. The critical challenge towards an intelligent assistive device for blind travelers is to restore the lost localization, navigation and perception functions with non-intrusive wearable devices. This talk will discuss wearable processing algorithms on Google glass or other wearable devices to assist VIB in unknown dynamic environments. In addition to localizing themselves in both indoor and outdoor environments and perceiving the ambient environment and building up a map for navigation and safe travel, the novelty of this project is the development of algorithms that allows the wearers to understand the dynamic scene by estimating the relative motion between a wearer and moving objects such as fellow pedestrians and moving vehicles. This talk will also discuss the development of a novel wireless surgical camera (sCam) system to enhance and improve surgical procedures for single incision laparoscopic surgery and natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery. sCam can be inserted into a body cavity via the incision for the operation instrument or natural orifice, which will eliminate the need for dedicated incisions for laparoscopic cameras and the share use of an incision for surgical instruments. The talk will discuss a semi-spherical driving unit, which is referred to as a rotor, driven externally by a specially designed magnetic stator. The rotor consisting of magnets placed in the dome such that it can be magnetically coupled to the internal body wall by a stator placed ex vivo on or close to the dermal surface. The ex vivo magnets/coils can generate a 3D rotational magnetic field, thereby generating to rotate the in vivo rotor dome in all three dimensions. The stator can also serve as an anchoring system that keeps the camera steady during an operation.