2017 - 2021

University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, USA

Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (GPA 3.95)

Embedded Sensing and Control for High Speed Electro-hydraulic Soft Robots.
Soft robotics is a field of robotic system design characterized by materials and structures that exhibit large-scale deformation, high compliance, and rich multifunctionality. The incorporation of soft and deformable structures endows soft robotic systems with the compliance and resiliency that makes them well-adapted for unstructured and dynamic environments. While actuation mechanisms for soft robots vary widely, soft electrostatic transducers such as dielectric elastomer actuators and electro-hydraulic actuators have demonstrated promise due to their muscle-like performance. Despite significant leaps in design and modeling of electro-hydraulic actuators thus far, the applications based on these novel actuators are often limited to tethered systems that require bulky and high-cost external sensors and controllers. To address the mentioned shortcomings, this body of research has enabled embedded perception and intelligence to electromechanical systems driven by electro-hydraulic actuators, by (i) developing capacitive self-sensing and magnetic sensing techniques to estimate shape changes of electro-hydraulic actuators in real-time; (ii) designing, modeling, and implementing a controller for a mobile soft robot driven by electro-hydraulic actuators; and (iii) proposing a contact force estimator for the robot using an onboard inertial measurement unit and magnetic displacement sensors. This work represents a substantial step to bring soft robotics closer to practical, real-world applications.

2015 - 2017

Texas Tech University, Lubbock, USA

B.Sc. with highest honors in Mechanical Engineering (GPA 3.89)

Evaluation of 3D-printed soft fingertip grasping ability for variable fingertips' design parameters
Early designs of artificial fingertips included only rigid materials, leading to poor performance on grasping tasks, partially due to small contact areas and coefficients of friction between the fingertips and the objects. Including soft materials provides larger contact areas and friction between the fingertips and object, improving grasp stability and ability to manipulate objects. In previous studies, various attempts have been made to design soft artificial fingertips that can exhibit grasping ability as close to that of human fingertips as possible. Previous literature has shown that silicone rubber was considered the best material for grasping performance, but there has been no systematic investigation how changing various other design parameters affects fingertip performance. In this research, thirty 3D printed prosthetic fingertip prototypes were created with three varying parameters: shape (five shapes based on flatness/roundness of the fingertip), fat layer thickness (three thicknesses of the fat layer), and fat layer hardness (two Shore hardness indexes of the silicone rubber). The objective of this research is to identify which of, and in what way, the three parameters significantly influence the fingertips’ coefficient of friction and area of contact. The results of this study show the potential of the 3D printed soft fingertips, which display similar contact behaviors with human fingertips in different sliding directions and indentation levels. Additionally, the study suggests that, while no significant conclusions can be made about the influence of the three parameters on the coefficient of friction, two out of three parameters, the fingertip shape and hardness, play an important role in changing the fingertips’ area of contact.

Patents: Provisional Applications

• Capacitive Self-sensing for Electrostatic Transducers with High Voltage Isolation. (Application No 63/032,209).
• Embedded Magnetic Sensing Method for Soft Actuators. (Application No 63/189,571).

Reviewer

• Science Robotics
• Advanced Materials
• Soft Robotics
• International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR)
• Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)
• Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS)
• IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
• IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
• IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft)

Teaching Assistant Experience

• Fall 2018 - MCEN 4043 System Dynamics
• Fall 2020 - MCEN 2063 Solid Mechanics

Research Mentoring

• 2018 - Dade McMorris (B.SC.) - Title: Self-sensing of High Voltage Electrostatic Actuators .
• 2019 - Jatin Mayekar (M.S.) - Title: Design and Modeling of Electro-hydraulic Rolling Soft Robot.
• 2020 - Kyle Martinaitis (B.SC.) - Title: Characterization and Model Validation for the Electro-hydraulic Rolling Soft Robot.

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