Dr. Patel’s research is concerned with the design and application of advanced robotic systems and has been motivated by space and medical applications. The aspects of Dr. Patel’s work that are most relevant to the activities of Western Space are as follows: (1) Design of Advanced Robotic Systems: Dr. Patel has made pioneering contributions in the areas of kinematically redundant (dexterous) robot manipulators and those with structural flexibility. Such features are present in several robotic systems, e.g., CSA’s Canadarm-2 and SPDM, and in surgical robots that involve the use of thin flexible tools such as for laparoscopic surgery and percutaneous interventions.

As part of this (2) Teleoperation, Haptics, and Latency in Robotics-based Medical Applications: This work was motivated by the advent of teleoperated (leader-follower) robotic systems (such as the da Vinci) for minimally invasive surgery and the absence of haptic (force) feedback to the surgeon. The research has focused on teleoperation under various conditions, both with and without haptic feedback. A particular aspect of the work that is relevant to space and long-distance terrestrial applications is teleoperation in the presence of time delays.

In this context, research has been done at CSTAR to study the effect of latency on performing surgery using a specially-equipped teleoperated robotic system operating over a dedicated network involving a distance of 3,000 km between the leader and the follower robots. research, three fully operational prototypes of advanced redundant robotic systems were developed and used in three projects under CSA’s Strategic Technologies in Automation and Robotics (STEAR) Program in collaboration with Bombardier Inc. These projects were aimed at developing and implementing state-of-the-art theoretical and practical methodologies in several key areas in space robotics.