Ravi Balasubramanian

Associate Professor
School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering
Oregon State University

Welcome to my website! I am a tenured Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering at Oregon State University. I direct the Robotics and Human Control Systems Lab as part of the OSU robotics group. Previously, I was an Associate Research Scientist in Mechanical Engineering at Yale University, associated with the Grab Lab. Before that I was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Washington Neurobotics Lab with Prof. Yoky Matsuoka. I received my PhD from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon working with Prof. Matthew T. Mason and Dr. Alfred Rizzi.

News!
1. Our paper on using implanted passive engineering mechanisms to advance tendon-transfer surgery has been accepted to the International Symposium on Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering (CMBBE 2013). Final version coming soon.
2. Our group is excited to participate in the OpenSim workshop in March 2013.
3. Our group is presenting a paper in the AAAI Spring Symposium Series on the topic of mobile-robot error recovery in the track of Designing Intelligent Robots: Reintegrating AI II. Final version coming soon.

3. Our group presented a paper on the biomechanics of tendon-transfer surgeries in the ASB Northwest Biomechanics symposium in May 2012.
4. Check out our papers on incorporating variable transmission mechanisms in the design of underactuated robot hands for improving grasp robustness (IROS 2012) and enabling sensorless transitioning from a pinch grasp to a power grasp (ReMAR 2012).
5. Our paper on Physical Human Interactive Guidance to learn the human heuristics for grasping has been accepted in the IEEE Transactions on Robotics journal. PDF
6. Our paper on the disturbance response of underactuated robot hands has been accepted to the ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics. PDF

7. Our group published a paper titled "An Approximate Decoupled Dynamics and Kinematics Analysis of Legless Locomotion" in the journal Nonlinear Dynamics. (PDF)

Education
B Eng. (Hon, 2000), M.Eng (2000), Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore.
MS (2003), PhD, Robotics (2006), Carnegie Mellon University.

Research
Robotic Manipulation and Locomotion
Human Control Systems (Hand biomechanics, skill Acquisition, and control execution)
Human-Robot Interaction
Kinematics, Dynamics, and Controls
Jump to the research page; publications page.

Service
Associate Editor, The International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), 2009.
Program Committee, Robotics: Science and Systems, 2007, 2008, and 2011.
Reviewer for several robotics conferences since 2001 (ICRA, IROS, BioRob, ASME IDETC).
Reviewer for Journal of Neurophysiology, Journal of Nonlinear Dynamics, International Journal of Robotics Research, Autonomous Robots.

Music
I have been performing an Indian classical percussion instrument called the Ghatam for over seventeen years. Check out my music page and this fun article in the Sruti magazine.

Contact: ravi.balasubramanian at oregonstate.edu


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