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Amir Degani
PhD Student

Associated center: CFR

Email address: adegani@andrew.cmu.edu

Mailing address:
Carnegie Mellon University
Robotics Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

For more information, see my personal homepage.

Jump to: Research interests | Keywords | Labs & groups | Projects | Publications

My main interests are: Dynamic locomotion, Kinematics, and Mechanical design.

I am interested in finding ways to use dynamic movements in climbing robots. Similar to a monkey climbing up a tree, robots can also use dynamic movements to climb. These dynamic movements can either enable the robot to overcome obstacles or can minimize the number of necessary actuators. I am also interested in the medical field, designing medical systems.

Currently I am involved in two projects: Dynamic Climbing: Design and control of a single actuator dynamic climbing robot Design of a miniature cardiac snake: we are designing a small diameter mechanism that can be used in medical applications. Cardiac applications include LAA ligation or ablation.

Older projects: Singularity analysis of parallel manipulators using Maxwell-Cremona Theorem. Kinematic knee modeling: developing a new system that will enable us to come up with a fast and minimally invasive way to predict the mechanical properties of the human knee. We will later determine a "patient specific" kinematic model and will try to accurately simulate the motion of the knee.

bioengineering, mechanisms, mechatronics, medical robotics, motion planning, and snake robots

• Biomedical Robotics Lab
• Biorobotics - Conducting motion planning research for snake robots, mobile robots, and actuator arrays, mainly geared for scenarios where the robot does not have a priori knowledge of the world.
• Manipulation Lab - The Manipulation Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University investigates fundamental modes of manipulation under uncertainty.
• Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery - Researching planning (medical image computing, simulation) and execution (intraoperative sensing and actuation) technologies for computer-assisted surgery.

• Highly-Articulated Robotic Probe - We developed and tested a prototype based on an innovative approach of a highly articulated robotic probe.

Note: This list may not be comprehensive. It contains only those publications in the RI publications database. Entries are listed in reverse chronological order.

• A Dynamic Single Actuator Vertical Climbing Robot
  A. Degani, A. Shapiro, H. Choset, and M. Mason
  Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2007. IROS 2007. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on, November, 2007, pp. 2901-2906. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [420 KB] copyrighted

• Recognizing knee pathologies by classifying instantaneous screws of the six degrees-of-freedom knee motion
  A. Wolf and A. Degani
  Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing, Vol. 45, No. 5, May, 2007, pp. 475-482. [Abstract]

• Epicardial Atrial Ablation Using a Novel Articulated Robotic Medical Probe Via a Percutaneous Subxiphoid Approach
  T. Ota, A. Degani, B. Zubiate, A. Wolf, H. Choset, D. Schwartzman, and M.A. Zenati
  nnovations: Technology & Techniques in Cardiothoracic & Vascular Surgery, Vol. 1, No. 6, December, 2006, pp. 335-340. [Abstract]

• Graphical Singularity Analysis of 3-DoF Planar Parallel Manipulator
  A. Degani and A. Wolf
  Proc. 2006 Advances in Robot Kinematics (ARK 2006), Springer, June, 2006.

• Classifying Knee Pathologies using Instantaneous Screws of the Six Degrees-of-Freedom Knee Motion
  A. Wolf and A. Degani
  Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, IEEE, May, 2006, pp. 2946-2951. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [463 KB] copyrighted

• Graphical Singularity Analysis of Planar Parallel Manipulators
  A. Degani and A. Wolf
  Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, IEEE, May, 2006, pp. 751-756. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [498 KB] copyrighted

• Highly Articulated Robotic Probe for Minimally Invasive Surgery
  A. Degani, H. Choset, A. Wolf, and M.A. Zenati
  Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, IEEE, May, 2006, pp. 4167-4172. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [846 KB] copyrighted

• Percutaneous Intrapericardial Interventions Using a Highly Articulated Robotic Probe
  A. Degani, H. Choset, A. Wolf, T. Ota, and M.A. Zenati
  Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE / RAS-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, February, 2006, pp. 7 - 12. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [657 KB] copyrighted