
Rajesh Elara MohanSingapore University of Technology and Design · Division of Engineering Product Development
Rajesh Elara Mohan
PhD, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
About
347
Publications
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Introduction
Dr. Mohan is currently an Assistant Professor with the Engineering Product Development Pillar at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). He received his Ph.D. and M.Sc degrees from the Nanyang Technological University in 2012 and 2005. He obtained his B.E degree from the Bharathiar University, India in 2003. His research interests are in robotics with an emphasis on self-reconfigurable platforms as well as research problems related to robot ergonomics and autonomous systems. He has published more than 150 papers in leading journals, books, and conferences. He is the recipient of SG Mark Design Award in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, ASEE Best of Design in Engineering Award in 2012, Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors’ Award in 2010 and A’ Design award in 2018 and 2019. He is the cofounder of Lionsbot and Oceania Robotics, global robotics companies that develops and deploys a wide range of autonomous robots for cleaning and ship maintenance. He is also a visiting faculty member of International Design Institute at Zhejiang University, China. Dr. Mohan has served in various positions of organizing and technical committees of several international competitions and conferences.
Additional affiliations
October 2011 - present
Publications
Publications (347)
Reconfigurable modular robots can be used in application domains such as exploration, logistics, and outer space. The robots should be able to assemble and work as a single entity to perform a task that requires high throughput. Selecting an optimum assembly position with minimum distance traveled by robots in an obstacle surrounding the environmen...
Complete coverage path planning (CCPP) is a trending research area in floor cleaning robotics. CCPP is often approached as an optimization problem, typically solved by considering factors, such as power consumption and time as key objectives. In recent years, the safety of cleaning robots has become a major concern, which can critically limit the p...
Robots are showing great impact and, in recent trends, appearing in areas such as education and entertainment. Robotic soccer is becoming more prevalent in competitions, furthering research in robotics and artificial intelligence. Reconfigurable robotics is used in application domains such as cleaning, multi-terrain locomotion, and logistical suppo...
The ability of reconfigurable robots to adapt to varying tasks and environments furnishes versatility and efficiency in their operations. In this article, tiling robots are introduced as a novel paradigm of shape‐morphing reconfigurable robots, defining them as polyform‐inspired machines capable of transforming between at least two polymorphic shap...
Liquid-carrying robots require slosh suppression methods to improve their performance. To design these systems requires effective slosh measurement. State-of-the-art slosh estimation methods have limitations, which include solely handling unidirectional motion or relying on theoretical models. This paper proposes a novel sensor array for measuring...
Landscape maintenance is essential for ensuring agricultural productivity, promoting sustainable land use, and preserving soil and ecosystem health. Pruning is a labor-intensive task among landscaping applications that often involves repetitive pruning operations. To address these limitations, this paper presents the development of a dual-arm holon...
Designed for engineers, designers, and enthusiasts, the Design Transformation Card is a perfect comprehensive toolkit for the conceptualisation and creation of reconfigurable systems. It uses tested and validated principles drawn from engineering design and robotics to visually illustrate transformation modes and means for easy explorations of suit...
Designed for engineers, designers, and enthusiasts, the Design Transformation Card is a perfect comprehensive toolkit for the conceptualisation and creation of reconfigurable systems. It uses tested and validated principles drawn from engineering design and robotics to visually illustrate transformation modes and means for easy explorations of suit...
Mobile service robots experience excessive vibrations when travelling over uneven surfaces in their workspace, increasing the degradation rate of the mechanical components or disrupting the robot’s sensing abilities for proper localization and navigational capabilities. Robot inclusivity principles can determine the suitability of a site for robot...
Regular exercise plays a crucial role in promoting overall well-being in today’s lifestyle. However, individuals often find it challenging to properly execute exercises, including maintaining correct postures and appropriate movement speeds. Robotic companions have emerged as potential solutions to assist and motivate users during exercise sessions...
Resource sharing is a crucial part of a multi-robot system. We propose a Boolean satisfiability based approach to resource sharing. Our key contributions are an algorithm for converting any constrained assignment to a weighted-SAT based optimization. We propose a theorem that allows optimal resource assignment problems to be solved via repeated app...
In the era of autonomy, the integration of intelligent systems capable of navigating and perceiving their surroundings has become ubiquitous. Many sensors have been developed for environmental perceiving, with LIDAR emerging as a preeminent technology for precise obstacle detection. However, LIDAR has inherent limitations, impeding its ability to d...
Complete area-coverage path planners are essential for robots performing tasks like cleaning, inspection, and surveying. However, they often involve complex calculations, mapping, and determining movement directions, leading to high computational or processing overheads and the risk of deadlocks. This paper proposes an approach for cleaning, i.e.,...
This paper presents a comprehensive study on fall recognition and forecasting for reconfigurable stair-accessing robots by leveraging deep learning techniques. The proposed framework integrates machine learning algorithms and recurrent neural networks (RNNs), specifically Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Bidirectional LSTM (BiLSTM), for fall detec...
Developing guidelines for designing robot-inclusive spaces has been challenging and resource-intensive, primarily relying on physical experiments and observations of robot interactions within the built environment. These conventional methods are often costly, time-consuming, and labour-intensive, demanding manual intervention. To address these limi...
Mobile service robots employ vision systems to discern objects in their workspaces for navigation or object detection. The lighting conditions of the surroundings affect a robot’s ability to discern and navigate in its work environment. Robot inclusivity principles can be used to determine the suitability of a site’s lighting condition for robot pe...
Reconfigurable robots are deployed for applications demanding area coverage, such as cleaning and inspections. Reconfiguration per context, considering beyond a small set of predefined shapes, is crucial for area coverage performance. However, the existing area coverage methods of reconfigurable robots are not always effective and require improveme...
Legged locomotion is essential for navigating challenging terrains where conventional robotic systems encounter difficulties. This study investigates the sensitivity of the reconfigurable Klann legged mechanism (KLM) to variations in the input geometric parameters, such as joint position location, link lengths, and angles between linkages, on the c...
As autonomous cleaning robots advance, we expect certain features, such as higher area coverage and robustness. To explore these features and their challenges, we need tools and strategies that allow us to develop them rapidly. In this paper, we present lessons learned and results while performing 3 months long field trials on the autonomy of a sel...
In reconfigurable robotics, intra-reconfiguration enables a robot to change its functional abilities, while inter-reconfiguration manipulates the specification limits of the robot hardware. Although the versatility of inter-reconfigurable robots is desired in advanced autonomous systems, the O(n
$^{3})$
algorithm computational time complexity chal...
Doors are part of the building infrastructure that mobile robots have to pass through to reach zones on the other side. If robots were to clear these obstacles, they would require human assistance, advanced end-effectors, and complex control systems, making it challenging for robots. Therefore, a robot deployed in an environment should be capable o...
Transforming spherical robots (TSR) has the potential to significantly advance the field of robotics by offering new possibilities for locomotion, kinematics, dynamics, and control. These robots have the ability to transform their shape to suit different environments, which makes them ideal for tasks not feasible with conventional fixed morphology...
Reconfigurable robotic systems (RRS) have demonstrated their usefulness in various sectors, including surveillance, rescue missions, space exploration, maintenance, and cleaning. However, designing adaptable and flexible robotic systems is challenging, and researchers have developed innovative mechanical designs that can optimize the performance of...
Mobile service robots often have to work in dynamic and cluttered environments. Multiple safety hazards exist for robots in such work environments, which visual sensors may not detect in time before collisions or robotic damage. An alternative hazard alert system using tactile methods is explored to pre-emptively convey surrounding spatial informat...
Floor-cleaning robots are primarily designed to clean on a single floor, while multi-floor environments are usually not considered target applications. However, it is more efficient to have an autonomous floor-cleaning robot that can climb stairs and reach the next floors in a multi-floor building. To operate in such environments, the ability of a...
Reconfigurable robots have the potential to perform complex tasks by adapting their morphology to different environments. However, designing optimal morphologies for these robots is challenging due to the large design space and the complex interactions between the robot and the environment. An in-house robot named Smorphi, having four holonomic mob...
An automated Condition Monitoring (CM) and real-time controlling framework is essential for outdoor mobile robots to ensure the robot’s health and operational safety. This work presents a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled CM and vibrotactile haptic-feedback-based real-time control framework suitable for deploying mobile robots in dynamic o...
Floor‐cleaning robots play a crucial role in both industrial and domestic spaces. However, these robots often face challenges due to hazardous components in their environment, which can cause them to fail and prevent them from performing at their best. This situation necessitates continuous research in the field of floor‐cleaning robots. However, m...
Autonomous mobile cleaning robots are ubiquitous today and have a vast market need. Current studies are mainly focused on autonomous cleaning performances, and there exists a research gap on monitoring the robot’s health and safety. Vibration is a key indicator of system deterioration or external factors causing accelerated degradation or threats....
The efficacy of using patents for stimulation to support creativity during the concept phase in engineering design is investigated through understanding: (a) the effects of patents for stimulation on generated concepts’ quantity, novelty, and quality and (b) the consequences of stimulating with patents from various distances of analogy on the gener...
An automated condition monitoring (CM) framework is essential for outdoor mobile robots to trigger prompt maintenance and corrective actions based on the level of system deterioration and outdoor uneven terrain feature states. Vibration indicates system failures and terrain abnormalities in mobile robots; hence, five vibration threshold classes for...
Cleaning is a fundamental routine task in human life that is now handed over to leading-edge technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence. Various floor-cleaning robots have been developed with different cleaning functionalities, such as vacuuming and scrubbing. However, failures can occur when a robot tries to clean an incompatible di...
Inspection and surveillance of the false ceiling are critical for maintaining a safe, clean, and healthy interior environment free of pests. The pest management industry is evolving and coming up with intelligent solutions. This paper introduces the conceptual design of the robot named FalconRCC designed to navigate efficiently in the false-ceiling...
Reconfigurable robots are suitable for cleaning applications due to their high flexibility and ability to change shape according to environmental needs. However, continuous change in morphology is not an energy-efficient approach, with the limited battery capacity. This paper presents a metaheuristic-based framework to identify the optimal morpholo...
Floor-cleaning robots are becoming popular and operating in public places to ensure the places are clean and tidy. These robots are often operated in a dynamic environment that is less safe and has a high probability of ending up in accidents. Sound event-based context detection is expected to overcome drawbacks in a robot’s visual sensing to avoid...
Steam mopping is an eco-friendly solution for cleaning and disinfecting floors, avoiding harsh chemicals or harmful UV lights. Currently, commercial steam mopping systems are manually operated, which is laborious and unsafe. This work presents the design methodology of a novel, eco-friendly autonomous steam mopping robot named ‘Snail’ for cleaning...
Hazardous object detection (escalators, stairs, glass doors, etc.) and avoidance are critical functional safety modules for autonomous mobile cleaning robots. Conventional object detectors have less accuracy for detecting low-feature hazardous objects and have miss detection, and the false classification ratio is high when the object is under occlu...
The Ibex platform was designed to navigate smooth to minimally rough curved vertical surfaces for various purposes such as inspection and cleaning. Being of a single-wheel configuration, it is necessary to investigate how the system functions in terms of overall suction and locomotion ability. This paper presents the modelling of the Ibex system as...
Reconfigurable robots provide an attractive option for cleaning tasks, thanks to their better area coverage and adaptability to changing environment. However, the ability to change morphology creates drastic changes in the reconfigurable robot dynamics, and existing control design techniques do not take this into account. Neglecting configuration c...
Navigation is a primary requirement for mobile robots as they encounter hazards during operation. To improve safety for robotic deployments, hazard alert systems could be integrated into their spatial environments to reduce robotic computational load and hardware requirements, while providing benefits to visually-impaired human users in the area. M...
Iterations in design is ubiquitous to drive constant innovation in the pursuit of excellence in product development, service delivery, systems, and subsystems integration. Within a given time frame of a design process, iteration can occur at different scales, forms, types, etc. Iteration was highlighted recently in the innovation framework using th...
Reconfigurable products and systems, or more broadly transformer products and systems, change their state or morphology to perform multiple functions depending on the needs. Such systems continue to play a vital role in developing a wide range of autonomous robotic solutions in the areas of surveillance, cleaning and maintenance, and rescue. Curren...
In the past two decades, robotics have invested tremendous research effort to deploy long-term autonomous robots to ensure a smart hygienic manufacturing environment in the food and drink industry and translated such attempts into successful robotic products. However, most such systems were developed with fixed morphological design, which highly co...
This paper describes the design and development of a 3D printed hydroblasting robot called Hornbill. This robotic platform incorporates magnetic-based adhesion, differential wheel-based locomotion principle, and a hydroblasting unit consists of nozzles mounted on the rotating arm. One of the key indicators of the effectiveness of the hydroblasting...
For visual inspection of curved surfaces, we developed a modular 3D printed climbing robot called Ibex. The robot platform consists of a locomotion module which is interconnected with two adhesion modules. The complex structural frames of the locomotion and adhesion modules and the interlocking mechanisms of these modules are completely 3D printed....
Presents a listing of the editorial board, board of governors, current staff, committee members, and/or society editors for this issue of the publication.
Floor cleaning robots are widely used in public places like food courts, hospitals, and malls to perform frequent cleaning tasks. However, frequent cleaning tasks adversely impact the robot’s performance and utilize more cleaning accessories (such as brush, scrubber, and mopping pad). This work proposes a novel selective area cleaning/spot cleaning...
Pavement in outdoor settings is an unstructured environment with sharp corners, varying widths, and pedestrian activity that poses navigation challenges while cleaning for autonomous systems. In this work, an approach towards navigating without collision in constrained pavement spaces using the optimal instantaneous center of rotation (ICR) is demo...
Staircase climbing, particularly in complex environments of multi-storey buildings, is a challenging task for robotics. By leveraging the similarities between robot path planning and heat conduction, this paper presents a novel path planning to direct with optimal energy consumption the self-reconfigurable staircase cleaning robot called sTetro, ab...
This work presents the vision pipeline for our in-house developed autonomous reconfigurable pavement sweeping robot named Panthera. As the goal of Panthera is to be an autonomous self-reconfigurable robot, it has to understand the type of pavement it is moving in so that it can adapt smoothly to changing pavement width and perform cleaning operatio...