Farahnaz Maghooa

Robotics Engineering Student
MSc in Smart Systems Engineering

Email: Farah.Maghooa@laposte.net

Biography

Farah Maghooa is a last year engineering student at Polytech UPMC, Paris, France, with a focus on Robotics. She is also following a Masters in Smart Systems Engineering at the University of Pierre and Marie Curie (UPMC).

She has worked on projects involving multiple programming languages (C/C++, Java, Matlab) to create a middleware for a Roomba robot or to control industrial robotic arms and haptic devices. In 2013/2014, she led a one year student project for the CEA-LIST in the field of haptic and virtual reality.

At the Centre for Robotics Research of the King’s College London, she worked on the hybrid control of a soft-robot manipulator under the supervision of Prof. Kaspar Althoefer and Dr. Helge Wurdemann.

Description of Research

Farah has implemented a hybrid (pressure and velocity) control for a four-tendon driven manipulator.

The purpose of developing a new way of command for manipulators is to improve surgeons comfort during tricky procedures such as ablations. Nowadays, minimal invasive surgery requires a high training and involves unnatural and tiring finger positions. By enabling the use of a joystick to control a multiple segments manipulator, the access and ease in this type of procedure is improved significantly.

Farah has used Labview to, first, implement the velocity control of the four-tendon manipulator and a manual pressure control by the use of a button. The move of the joystick in a direction entails the move of the manipulator while the pressure can be controlled separately.

She has focused on the ability for the user to squeeze, unsqueeze and easily move the soft-robot manipulator in all directions without conceding on safety.

By the end, her work was moving towards an automatic pressure regulation inside the manipulator whilst its position is controlled by the user via the joystick.