About
Articles by Thrishantha
-
Crowd effort for early detection of Red Palm Weevil in Coconut trees
Crowd effort for early detection of Red Palm Weevil in Coconut trees
By Thrishantha Nanayakkara
Contributions
-
Here's how you can meet deadlines for grant applications and funding opportunities.
In all my successful grants, the final idea was never the idea I started with. Ideas evolve and get sharpened when you write. I rely on what the brain does after you stop a deep intellectual engagement. It keeps combining and refining thoughts when you are not consciously thinking about them. This is related to phenomena of memory consolidation. So start writing initial thoughts you have sufficiently early and ask yourself questions like “Is the idea clear enough? Why will it be useful, repeatable, and have transformative impact?” You need sufficiently long continuous writing and ideation time blocked on your calendar for engagement. Then interleave at least one hour breaks between deep engagement sessions. Do something else in gaps.
-
What do you do if you need to hire employees for a robotics startup?
This is something I learned from startups I am involved in. Engineers in the startup should be made aware of the burn rate of investor money. This means, trying to do everything inhouse can lead to failure. It is always good to do only the strategic tech developments inhouse and hire consultants who will get things done faster. This is why strategic partnerships with others is very important for a robotic startup.
-
What are the best strategies for avoiding unintended consequences of a non-profit program?
In my experience with an academic network to support students in a developing country, I can suggest the following: 1. What you think is important may not be the highest priority for the beneficiary. Understand their real needs first. For this, you need some people well grounded in the context to guide you. 2. Don't believe just one ground level source of opinions. There can be a lot of local politics. You have to carefully manage these politics to deliver what would add most value to the community. 3. No matter how hard you try, outcomes may not be what you expected. Develop equanimity. Do the best you can with honesty and prepare for any outcome. 4. Be aware of politics but stay out of politics.
-
How can you build a strong foundation in robotics?
Observation that physical interactions have uncertainty is very important for a roboticist. Just take a ball, drop it from the same height on the same spot several times. Observe that no trial is the same. Now do the math. Derive the ball bouncing equations from conservation of energy principle, and the principle of conservation of momentum in collisions combined with restitution. Do the simulation and approximate parameters to explain your experimental observations. See the gaps. Now imagine you can add an accelerometer on the ball and somehow design an actuator to control the post-collision speed of the ball at each collision. What kind of knowledge gaps do you have to implement a controller? Your robotics journey can start right here.
Activity
-
I had an amazing opportunity this week to host the workshop on "Enhancing Women's Participation in Robotics" at the AgriForwards CDT conference. This…
I had an amazing opportunity this week to host the workshop on "Enhancing Women's Participation in Robotics" at the AgriForwards CDT conference. This…
Liked by Thrishantha Nanayakkara
-
🚨 DigiEcon Global Investment Summit helped shine the spotlight on Sri Lanka. It's great to see this listicle (first of many) as a start. What's…
🚨 DigiEcon Global Investment Summit helped shine the spotlight on Sri Lanka. It's great to see this listicle (first of many) as a start. What's…
Liked by Thrishantha Nanayakkara
-
🔧 It’s the Last Day to order our Summer Bundle!! After reaching over 4000 children this year, we’ve made so many improvements and changes to our…
🔧 It’s the Last Day to order our Summer Bundle!! After reaching over 4000 children this year, we’ve made so many improvements and changes to our…
Liked by Thrishantha Nanayakkara
Experience & Education
Licenses & Certifications
Volunteer Experience
-
Speaker of the Robotics Forum
Imperial College London
- Present 3 years 10 months
Science and Technology
Imperial Robotics Forum currently spans 44 Laboratories, 44 Principal Investigators, 100+ Post-docs / Research Assistants, 200+ PhD / EngD students, securing in excess of £150 million in funding, in addition to 64 patents (15 commercial) and featuring over 2,400 publications. We push the frontiers of robotics technology in healthcare, home, and infrastructure.
-
Board of Directors, Strategic Task Group on Soft Robotics
UK Robotics and Automation Society
Economic Empowerment
To contribute to plan a strategic path for UK research in the area of soft robotics.
-
-
Associate Editor, Robotics and Automation Letters Journal
IEEE
- Present 5 years 7 months
Science and Technology
Manage the peer review process by assigning papers to reviewers, and making publication recommendations.
-
Associate Editor, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
IEEE
- Present 8 years 7 months
Science and Technology
Manage the peer review process by assigning papers to reviewers, and making publication recommendations.
-
Associate Editor, IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
IEEE
- Present 8 years 7 months
Science and Technology
Manage the peer review process by assigning papers to reviewers, and making publication recommendations.
-
Associate Editor, RoboSoft
IEEE
- Present 6 years 7 months
Science and Technology
Manage the peer review process by assigning papers to reviewers, and making publication recommendations.
-
Associate Editor
Robotic Science and Systems
- Present 6 years 7 months
Science and Technology
Manage the peer review process by assigning papers to reviewers, and making publication recommendations.
-
Member, Amazonian Protection Foundation Advisory Board & Amazonians Green Coin
Amazon Protection Foundation
- Present 5 years 2 months
Environment
Please see: https://amazonprotectionfoundation.org/
-
-
Reviewer
IEEE
- Present 23 years 7 months
Science and Technology
Review papers submitted for IEEE robotics journals and conferences. To name a few, IEEE Transactions in Robotics, IEEE Haptics, IEEE Sensors, ICRA, IROS, RoboSoft.
-
Member, peer review college
EPSRC
- Present 13 years 7 months
Science and Technology
Peer review research grant proposals submitted to EPSRC.
-
Participant in the Tsunami relief operations, December 2004, Sri Lanka
University of Moratuwa
- 1 year 1 month
Disaster and Humanitarian Relief
Some of my experience were included in my book - Devi (http://www.amazon.com/Devi-Thrishantha-Nanayakara/dp/1607970414 )
Publications
-
Multi-fingered haptic palpation using pneumatic feedback actuators
Elsevier
This paper proposes a multi-fingered palpation method which employs pneumatic haptic feedback actu- ators allowing users to experience haptic sensations at multiple fingers while carrying out remote soft tissue palpation. Pneumatic actuators are used to vary the stress on the user’s fingertips in accordance with the tissue stiffness, experienced during manual palpation. The proposed method reduces actuator elements compared to tactile actuators and provides more information than single-point…
This paper proposes a multi-fingered palpation method which employs pneumatic haptic feedback actu- ators allowing users to experience haptic sensations at multiple fingers while carrying out remote soft tissue palpation. Pneumatic actuators are used to vary the stress on the user’s fingertips in accordance with the tissue stiffness, experienced during manual palpation. The proposed method reduces actuator elements compared to tactile actuators and provides more information than single-point force feedback. The results of our finite element analysis have proven that our pneumatic haptic feedback device can recreate the contact stress between fingertip and soft tissue during palpation. The accuracy (96.8% vs. 93.3%) and time-efficiency (4.6 s vs. 8.3 s) advantages of using three-fingered over single-fingered pal- pation have been confirmed in our user study results of stiffness levels discrimination. Relatively good tumor detection sensitivities have been demonstrated by the palpation user study which has showed a direct correlation between tumor size and detection sensitivity and has further proven the efficiency of the proposed actuator and multi-fingered palpation method for tumor detection in palpation simulation.
Other authorsSee publication -
Adaptive grip control on an uncertain object
IEEE
Maintaining the grip on an artery with a pulsating impedance, holding the steering wheel of a vehicle on a bumpy terrain, or holding a live hamster without excessive squeezing may be trivial tasks to most humans. However, a robot will find it very difficult to maintain the grip of such uncertain objects based on real-time feedback control. This paper presents a stochastic control law to maintain the grip on an uncertain object while manipulating against external forces. The radial impedance…
Maintaining the grip on an artery with a pulsating impedance, holding the steering wheel of a vehicle on a bumpy terrain, or holding a live hamster without excessive squeezing may be trivial tasks to most humans. However, a robot will find it very difficult to maintain the grip of such uncertain objects based on real-time feedback control. This paper presents a stochastic control law to maintain the grip on an uncertain object while manipulating against external forces. The radial impedance parameters of the soft object is assumed to undergo Gaussian random variations. Here we demonstrate that the proposed model free grip controller can maintain a safe grip at two diagonally opposite points of the object merely based on the statistics of the normal force. It accomplishes this by computing a probability of grip failure to adapt the compression on the soft object. A novel optimal estimation algorithm that can concurrently estimate the unknown impedance parameters of the object and the states of the coupled dynamic system is discussed as a potential tool to be used in predictive optimal impedance control on uncertain objects. Experimental results on adaptive grip control on a cylindrical tube inflated and deflated with a Gaussian random variation has been presented to validate the algorithm.
Other authorsSee publication
Projects
-
EPSRC funded REINS project
- Present
In this project we try to understand methods to use haptic feedback to guide humans through low visibility conditions like in indoor fire fighting.
Other creators -
-
EU funded STIFF-FLOP project
We try to develop a soft robotic manipulator with controllable stiffness inspired by how the Octopus solves a lot of manipulation problems using its soft tentacles. I am the technical manager of this European consortium with 12 partner institutes.
-
EPSRC funded project on impedance control on uncertain objects
In this project, we addressed the question of how a robot could control the internal stiffness and damping to maintain stable interactions with variable environments, like walking on soft terrain and manipulating soft objects with variable stiffness and viscosity.
-
EU funded DARWIN project
In this project we try to develop algorithms for robots to learn grasping behaviors based on human demonstrations. We address issues such as abstraction and generalization of observations, understanding how robots could represent grasping experiences in the utility space rather than visual feature space, and solving the correspondence problem (how to map demonstrations of a human to a different robotic embodiment).
Honors & Awards
-
Chartered Engineer
IET
Chartered Engineer, a professional qualification awarded by IET for engineering design and leadership record.
Organizations
-
Permia Sensing
Director
- PresentI lead the R&D side of this start-up company, spun out by Imperial College London
-
Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics
Editorial Board
- PresentI was invited to join the editorial board of the Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics from April, 2014.
-
London Robotics Network
One of the three founders
- PresentThe London Robotics Network is an open network of people around London interested in robotics. We organise meetings, events and networking for the London robotics community. Web: https://connect.innovateuk.org/web/london-robotics-network
-
EPSRC Peer review College
Peer reviewer of research grants
- Present
Recommendations received
7 people have recommended Thrishantha
Join now to viewMore activity by Thrishantha
-
Yesterday's visit from MSR, Israel Center for Medical Simulation was another opportunity to reaffirm our goal of developing relationships and…
Yesterday's visit from MSR, Israel Center for Medical Simulation was another opportunity to reaffirm our goal of developing relationships and…
Liked by Thrishantha Nanayakkara
-
The UK are funding a major new program in dexterous robotic manipulation. This is great news. It's a fascinating set of problems that when solved…
The UK are funding a major new program in dexterous robotic manipulation. This is great news. It's a fascinating set of problems that when solved…
Liked by Thrishantha Nanayakkara
-
Being an immigrant of Sri Lankan origin, obviously I was disturbed by the rise of far-right sentiments in the French election and the significant…
Being an immigrant of Sri Lankan origin, obviously I was disturbed by the rise of far-right sentiments in the French election and the significant…
Posted by Thrishantha Nanayakkara
Other similar profiles
Explore collaborative articles
We’re unlocking community knowledge in a new way. Experts add insights directly into each article, started with the help of AI.
Explore MoreOthers named Thrishantha Nanayakkara
1 other named Thrishantha Nanayakkara is on LinkedIn
See others named Thrishantha Nanayakkara