M. Alba Perez

 

December, 2003

 

Robotics and Automation Laboratory

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

The Henry Samueli School of Engineering

University of California, Irvine

Irvine, CA 92697

(949) 824 8051

maperez@uci.edu

http://synthetica.eng.uci.edu/~alba

 

Education

 

3/99 – 9/03                              Ph. D. Mechanical Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA.

9/97 – 3/99                              Masters of Science, Mechanical Engineering (MSME 1999), Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA.

9/86 – 6/92                              Bachelor of Science, Industrial Engineering (BSIE 1996), specialized in Mechanical Engineering, ETSEIB, UPC (Polytechnic University of Catalonia), Barcelona, Spain.

 

Experience

 

 

11/03 – present                     Robotics and Automation Laboratory, UCI, Ph.D. Professor: Prof. J. M. McCarthy: Post-doctoral Fellow --- applied research in kinematic synthesis.

3/99 – 9/03                              Robotics and Automation Laboratory, UCI, Ph.D. advisor: Prof. J. M. McCarthy: Research Assistant ---responsible for theoretical and applied research in the design of spatial mechanisms and robotic systems.

4/01 – 6/01                              Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, UCI, Course Professor: J. M. McCarthy: Teaching Assistant, MAE 145: Theory of Machines and Mechanisms (Spring 2001)---responsible for preparing presenting lectures in class and in discussion sessions; assisted in preparation and grading of homework and exams; assisted students in homework solutions.

4/00 – 6/00                              Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, UCI, Course Professor: J. M. McCarthy: Teaching Assistant, MAE 145: Theory of Machines and Mechanisms (Spring 2000)---responsible for presenting lectures in discussion sessions, grading exams and advising students on homework solution

9/99 – 12/99                           Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, UCI, Course Professor: T. S. Hristov: Teaching Assistant, MAE 30: Applied Mechanics: Statics (Fall 1999)---responsible for presenting lectures in discussion sessions, grading exams and advising students on homework solution.

4/99 – 6/99                              Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, UCI, Course Professor: J. M. McCarthy: Teaching Assistant, MAE 183: Computer Aided Mechanism Design (Spring 1999) ---responsible for presenting lectures in discussion sessions, grading exams and advising students on homework solution.

3/97 – 8/97                              MAI, United Technologies Automotive: Design Engineer. Design of housings for electrical automotive components.

Contact address: Ctra. Igualada, km 1,5 Pol. Industrial - P.O. Box 106, 43800 Valls (Spain) Phone # 00.34. 977. 614 033.

12/96 – 3/97                           Bitron Industrie España, S.A.: Design Engineer. Design of temperature and pressure sensors for appliances and automotive industry.

                                                      Contact address: Bitron Industrie España, C/ Ifni, 24 30, 08930 Sant Adria del Besos, Barcelona (Spain). Phone # 00.34.93.4620014

1/94 – 6/96                              Waste Agency, Departament de Medi Ambient, Catalonia, Spain, Supervisor: Mr. Carles Viñolas, head of the planning department.: Planning engineer,.--- Development of the regional planning for the minimization, recycling and disposal of the industrial waste.

                                                      Contact address: C/ Doctor Roux, 80, 08017 Barcelona (Spain). Phone # 00.34.93.5673300.

9/92 – 6/96                              Cybernetics Institute, ETSEIB, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Advisor: Dr. Luís Basañez Villaluenga: Research Assistant, ---responsible for the mechanical design of a robotics platform system.

9/90 – 3/92                              Material Science Department, ETSEIB, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Advisor: Dr. Antoni Martinez: Research Assistant, ---responsible for characterization of mechanical properties for various plastic materials.

9/91 – 12/91                           Material Science Department, ETSEIB, Polytechnic University of Catalonia: Teaching Assistant, Course on the use of machinery for casting and machining plastic materials.

9/90 – 12/90                           Material Science Department, ETSEIB, Polytechnic University of Catalonia: Teaching Assistant, Course on the use of machinery for casting and machining plastic materials.

 

 

Awards

 

Balsells Fellowship, two-year fellowship from the University of California, the government of Catalonia and the Balsells family, for pursuing graduate studies at the University of California, Irvine.

 

NSF Travel Grant to present paper: “Dual Quaternion Synthesis of a Parallel 2-TPR Robot,” Proc. of the Workshop on Fundamental Issues and Future Research Directions for Parallel Mechanisms and Manipulators, October 3-4, 2002, Quebec City, Quebec, CA.

 

 

Ph.D. Dissertation

 

Dual Quaternion Synthesis of Constrained Robotic Systems: Constrained robotics systems are serial or parallel robots with less than six degrees of freedom. Dimensional synthesis is defined as the process of dimensioning a robot, that is, designing the link dimensions for a given task or set of tasks. In finite-position synthesis, we define the task as a series of positions that the robot must reach.

 

Dimensional synthesis of planar mechanisms was first solved using graphic methods, and later those methods were transformed into algebraic equations that described the constraints on the movement of the mechanism. This approach was successfully applied to spherical mechanisms and simple cases of spatial mechanisms. The methodology was not extended to general constrained robots due to the difficulty in stating the geometric constraints for robots with more than three links.

 

In my dissertation, a method for the kinematic synthesis of constrained robots is presented. It is based on the use of dual quaternions to construct the kinematics equations of the robot from a reference position and to equate them to a set of task positions. A calculation was devised to compute the maximum number of task positions for each robot topology, and a classification of constrained robots was obtained according to this. The design equations produced using this methodology have been solved numerically for both the link dimensions and the joint variables, and also a scheme has been introduced to eliminate the joint variables in order to obtain algebraic equations. These have been further simplified to closed algebraic expressions in several cases.

 

The dual quaternion synthesis methodology provides with a tool for the systematic design of constrained robots. Some of these results have been implemented in computer-aided design systems.

 

 

M.S. Project

 

Analysis and Design of Bennett Linkages. Bennett’s linkage was discovered by Bennett in 1903 and it is the only spatial 4R closed linkage with positive mobility; it can move with one degree of freedom thanks to its special geometry. Previous research pointed out that the two spatial RR chains that compose the Bennett’s linkage seemed to be the only two solutions to the synthesis of spatial RR chains. The finite position synthesis of spatial RR chains was solved in 1973 by Tsai and Roth.

 

In my Master’s thesis, I developed a new formulation to the synthesis of spatial RR chains based on the knowledge of the workspace generated by the Bennett’s linkage. The formulation gives simpler equations that can be solved to mathematically prove that the only two solutions form indeed a Bennett’s linkage. In addition, following the same formulation, the relation between Bennett’s linkage and its set of relative displacements was characterized.

 

 

B.S. Project

 

Design of a Platform for robotic tasks. My B.S. project consisted on the development of a robotic platform to work in coordination with a manipulator arm. The platform had two translational degrees of freedom plus two pure rotations whose axes lay on the surface of the platform. The complete design included kinematics and dynamics analysis, CAD detailed design, and selection of materials and components.

 

 

Publications

 

1. A. Perez and J.M. McCarthy, “Geometric Design of RRP, RPR and PRR Serial Chains”, submitted to Mechanism and Machine Theory, December 2003.
2. Villa-Uriol, M.C., Perez, A., Kuester, F. and Bagherdadeh, N., “Articulated Skeleton Synthesis Using Dual Quaternions”, submitted to Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2004).
3. A. Perez and J.M. McCarthy, “Dual Quaternion Synthesis of Constrained Robotic Systems”, accepted for publication at the Journal of Mechanical Design, August 2003.
4. A. Perez and J.M. McCarthy, “Dimensional Synthesis of CRR Serial Chains”, ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, Chicago, IL, September 2003.
5. A. Perez and J.M. McCarthy, “Dimensional Synthesis of RPC Serial Robots”, International Conference on Advanced Robotics, ICAR 2003, Coimbra, Portugal, June 2003.
6. A. Perez and J. M. McCarthy, “Dimensional Synthesis of Bennett Linkages,” ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, 125(1), pp. 98-104, March 2003.
7. A. Perez and J. M. McCarthy, “Bennett’s Linkage and the Cylindroid,” Mechanism and Machine Theory, 37(11), pp. 1245-1260, November 2002.
8. A. Perez and J. M. McCarthy, “Dual Quaternion Synthesis of a Parallel 2-TPR Robot,” Proc. of the Workshop on Fundamental Issues and Future Research Directions for Parallel Mechanisms and Manipulators, October 3-4, 2002, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.
9. A. Perez, J. M. McCarthy and B. Bennett, “Dual Quaternion Synthesis of Constrained Robots,” Advances in Robot Kinematics, (J. Lenarcic and F. Thomas,eds.), pp. 443-452, Kluwer Academic Publ.,Netherlands, 2002.
10. C.L. Collins, J. M. McCarthy, A. Perez, and H. Su, “The Structure of an Extensible Java Applet for Spatial Linkage Synthesis,” ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science and Engineering, 2(1), pp. 45-49, 2002.
11. A. Perez and J. M. McCarthy, “Dimensional Synthesis of Bennett Linkages,” Proceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, Baltimore, MD, Sept. 10-13, 2000.
12. A. Perez and J. M. McCarthy, “Dimensional Synthesis of Spatial RR Robots,” Advances in Robot Kinematics, (J. Lenarcic and M.M. Stanisic, eds.), pp. 93-102, Kluwer Academic Publ., Netherlands, June 2000.

 

 

 

Teaching

 

Courses Taken

Mathematics: Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Abstract Algebra, Algebraic Geometry, Projective Geometry, Differential Geometry, General Topology, Optimization.

Control Theory: Linear Systems, Geometric Nonlinear Control, Nonlinear Feedback Control, Dynamical Systems.

Robotics: Kinematics, Dynamics, Spatial Mechanisms Design, Biorobotics.

 

Software Experience

C++, Java, Unix, OS X, Mathematica, Maple, Matlab.

Special Topic Courses

Spring 1998          Differential Geometry in Kinematics. Lecture on instantaneous kinematics in the hypersphere.

Fall 1999               Algebraic Geometry in Kinematics. Lecture on dimension of algebraic varieties.

Fall 2000               Biorobotics. Lecture on identifying spinal systems as a response to spinal cutaneous stimulation.

Winter 2002         Microsystem Design. Design of a capacitive accelerometer.

Fall 2002               Geometric Methods in Mechanics. Lecture on symmetries of dynamical systems and Noether’s Theorem.

 

Teaching Experience

 

Spring 2001                            Theory of Machines and Mechanisms (undergraduate required course). Teaching Assistant. Responsibilities included preparing and presenting lectures in class and in discussion sessions; assisting in preparation and grading of homework and exams; introducing Mathematica to assist homework solutions.

Spring 2000                            Theory of Machines and Mechanisms (undergraduate required course). Teaching Assistant. Responsibilities included presenting lectures in discussion sessions, grading exams and advising students on homework solutions.

Fall 1999                                 Applied Mechanics: Statics (undergraduate required course). Teaching Assistant. Responsible for preparing and presenting lectures in discussion sessions, grading exams and advising students on homework solutions.

Spring 1999                            Computer Aided Mechanism Design (undergraduate technical elective). Teaching Assistant. Tasks included presenting lectures in discussion sessions, grading homework and exams and advising students on homework and test preparation.

 

Teaching Goals

Graduate courses: mathematical methods in kinematics, analysis and synthesis of robotic systems.

Undergraduate technical elective courses: design of mechanisms and robots.

Undergraduate required courses: linear algebra, statics, dynamics, linear control, theory of machines.

 

 

Research

 

 

Current Research Lines

Application of the dual quaternion synthesis methodology to different kinematic systems:

·       Identification and prediction of conformational changes in proteins and other macromolecular systems.

·       Identification of kinematic skeletons from visual data to define avatars for computer graphics applications.

·       Construction of spatial mechanisms based on closed-loop spatial chains.

·       Implementation of a general procedure for the computer-aided synthesis of constrained robots.

 

Future Research

I would like to pursue, among others, the following new lines of research:

·       Application of the synthesis theory to the design of micromechanical systems to achieve spatial tasks.

·       Further application of the hierarchical kinematic synthesis to identify kinematic structures from visual data (images and video data).

·       Further development of the theoretical aspects of dual quaternion kinematic synthesis, particularly addressing computational issues.

·       Exploration of the relation between rigid and non-rigid transformations for application in compliant mechanical systems.