Robotic medical assistance and medical applications. Theoretical kinematics of mechanisms, synthesis and optimization of robots and mechanisms, design of flexure mechanisms and flexible robots, parallel robots, applications of line geometry tools and screw theory for analysis and synthesis of robotic devices, applications of actuation redundancy and kinematic redundancy for stiffness control (modulation), applications of algebraic geometry methods for polynomial system solving related to mechanism designs
Background:
I joined the Mechanical Engineering Department at Columbia University on January 1st, 2005. Previously, I was a visiting research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University where I worked within the department of Computer Science NSF ERC CISST (NSF Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology). At CISST I worked on designing a system for Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) of the upper airways together with Russell H. Taylor, Paul Flint M.D., Peter Kazanzides, Allison Okamura and Ankur Kapoor. My responsibilites in this project included the design and construction of the slave robots used for this system. This system incorporates novel designs of small scale hybrid robots composed of snake-like and parallel mechanisms that implement flexible members. I am currently continuing my work on this system as an ongoing collaboration.
I received my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the ME department of the Technion, November 2002. My Master thesis topic was the design and synthesis of a mini parallel robot for medical applications. My Ph.D. dissertation title was "Task-based Design and Synthesis of Variable-Geometry Parallel Robots. You can get a clearer explanation about my work at the Technion at my personal web page at the robotics laboratory of the Technion.
