Sara Adela Abad Guamán

Ph.D. in Design Engineering and Robotics, MSc. in AI.

Email: s.abad-guaman@ucl.ac.uk

             sara.adela.abad@gmail.com

Biography:

In 2010, Sara obtained her bachelor degree in Electronics and Control Engineering at National Polytechnic School.  Then, she worked in the automation of buildings and industrial processes. In 2012, she got a scholarship for studying an MSc from the Ecuadorian Government through The National Secretariat for Higher Education, Sciences, Technology & Innovation of Ecuador (SENESCYT). One year later at the University of Southampton, she received her master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence.

In 2014, she got another scholarship from the same Ecuadorian institution to study a Ph.D. in Robotics. Sara started her Ph.D. under the supervision of Dr. Thrishantha Nanayakkara at King’s College London. Then, her Ph.D. was transferred to Imperial College London. In June 2019, she successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis in Robotics at Dyson School of Design Engineering. Nowadays, she is working at Univerversity College London as a Postdoc in the INSTINCT project.

Description of the research:

Her research is focused on how to simplify the locomotion system of robots for uneven terrain conditions. It is based on embodiment to achieve stable and efficient locomotion requiring little control. Nowadays, she is examining the feet of goats to abstract a principle that can be applied to the foot of a robot. Additionally, she is analyzing the effects of the interaction foot-environment when the shape and stiffness of the foot change.

Research Interests:

• Biologically Inspired Robots
• Locomotion Systems For Uneven Terrain Conditions
• Robots For Farms
• Embodiment
• Passive Dynamics
• Robots’ adaptability

Publications

Sara Adela-Abad Guaman, Nicolas Herzig, Seyedmohammadhadi Sadati, Thrishantha Nanayakkara, “Significance of the compliance of the joints on the dynamic slip resistance of a bio-inspired hoof”, pp. 1 – 14, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2019 PDF

Sara Adela Abad Guaman, Nantachai Sornkarn, Thrishantha Nanayakkara, “The role of morphological computation of the goat hoof in slip reduction”, 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS2016). PDF

Videos

Presentation with Marc Raibert Boston Dynamics at UCL

The role of morphological computation of the goats’ hoof in slip reduction