Jake J. Abbott
University of Utah
Seminar Information
In this talk, I will focus on a variety of recent projects in my lab that have pushed the state of the art in magnetic manipulation in different directions. I will describe work that we have done on the control of swarms of microrobots, motivated by targeted therapies in the human body. I will describe a new class of haptic device, motivated by surgical simulation and training of microsurgeries such as eye surgery. I will describe an improved controller that can be used with any electromagnetic manipulation system to increase performance and eliminate the risk of overheating. Finally, I will describe how magnetic fields can be used to dexterously manipulate nonmagnetic metallic objects, motivated by the problem of space debris.
Prof. Jake Abbott is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Utah and a core member of the Robotics Center. He is the head of the Telerobotics Lab, where his research synthesizes topics ranging from haptics to magnetics for applications ranging from medicine to microgravity. He received his training in haptics and teleoperation during his Ph.D. work with Allison Okamura at Johns Hopkins University. He received his training in micro-robotics and magnetics during his postdoctoral work with Brad Nelson at ETH Zurich. He has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and is currently an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Robotics Research. He is a recipient of the Best Manipulation Paper award at ICRA 2010, the Best Poster award at the 2013 Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics, the Best Paper Award at the 2014 Haptics Symposium, and the Best Paper Award in Medical Robotics at the ICRA 2017.