Harry Asada

About

Harry Asada is the Ford Professor of Engineering and a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include augmenting human capabilities with wearable robots, modeling and understanding cell interactions through numerical simulations, and building and controlling harmonic actuators based on piezo-electric units. He has contributed to the development of assistive robots for passengers in railway stations, supernumerary robotic limbs, and underwater robots for port security, including a submersible robot capable of undetected ultrasound scans along underwater surfaces. Professor Asada's academic background includes a B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. from Kyoto University in Japan. His extensive research portfolio encompasses the design of elastic robot hands for precision operations, control of direct-drive robotic arms, and analysis of manipulator dynamics. He has received numerous awards for his work, including best paper awards, the Henry Paynter Outstanding Researcher Award, and the Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, with a long-standing history of service at MIT, including leadership roles in control, instrumentation, and robotics committees. His contributions have significantly advanced the fields of robotics, control systems, and mechanical design.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Engineering
• Simulation
• Embedded system
• Materials science
• Biology
• Structural engineering
• Biochemistry
• Chemistry

Selected publications

• Development of a Wheeled Wall-Climbing Robot with a Shape-Adaptive Magnetic Adhesion Mechanism

  2020 · 76 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  This paper presents a wheeled wall-climbing robot with a shape-adaptive magnetic adhesion mechanism for large steel structures. To travel up and down various curved ferromagnetic surfaces, we developed a 2 DOF rotational magnetic adhesion mechanism installed on each wheel that can change the orientation of the magnets to keep the magnetic force direction always normal to the contact surface. These magnetic wheels have a spherical shape and can move relative to the main body by a non-elastic susp…

  DOI

• Otariidae-Inspired Soft-Robotic Supernumerary Flippers by Fabric Kirigami and Origami

  IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics · 2020 · 69 citations

  Wearable robotic devices are receiving rapidly growing attentions for human-centered scenarios from medical, rehabilitation, to industrial applications. Supernumerary robotic limbs have been widely investigated for the augmentation of human limb functions, both as fingers and manipulator arms. Soft robotics offers an alternative approach to conventional motor-driven robot limbs toward safer and lighter systems, while pioneering soft supernumerary limbs are strongly limited in payload and dexteri…

  DOI

• Supernumerary Robotic Limbs to Assist Human Walking With Load Carriage

  Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics · 2020 · 61 citations

  Abstract Walking with load carriage is a common requirement for individuals in many situations. Legged exoskeletons can transfer the load weight to the ground with rigid-leg structures, thus reducing the load weight borne by the human user. However, the inertia of paralleled structures and the mechanical joint tend to disturb natural motions of human limbs, leading to high-energy consumption. Different from exoskeletons, Supernumerary Robotic Limbs (SuperLimbs) are kinematically independent of t…

  DOI

• A computational modeling of invadopodia protrusion into an extracellular matrix fiber network

  Scientific Reports · 2022 · 13 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Invadopodia are dynamic actin-rich membrane protrusions that have been implicated in cancer cell invasion and metastasis. In addition, invasiveness of cancer cells is strongly correlated with invadopodia formation, which are observed during extravasation and colonization of metastatic cancer cells at secondary sites. However, quantitative understanding of the interaction of invadopodia with extracellular matrix (ECM) is lacking, and how invadopodia protrusion speed is associated with the frequen…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Time-Critical Fall Prediction Based on Lipschitz Data Analysis and Design of a Reconfigurable Walker for Preventing Fall Injuries

  IEEE Access · 2023-12-25 · 11 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Falls may cause serious injuries to older adults, leading to a deteriorated quality of life. Currently, fall injury prevention devices are lacking, especially for the balance impaired population who rely on mobility aids. Here, the functionality of a walker is augmented, so that it can predict a fall in real-time and prevent fall injuries with a rapidly reconfigurable mechanism. A key challenge is real-time fall prediction, which is a time-critical decision making process. A fall must be predict…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: NRI: Remotely Operated Reconfigurable Walker Robots for Eldercare

  NSF · $620k · 2022–2025

• Stochastic Recruitment and Broadcast Feedback of Cellular Control Systems and Its Application to Muscle Actuators

  NSF · $311k · 2007–2010

• Control-Configured Underwater Robots for Precision Multi-Axis Maneuvering

  NSF · $375k · 2014–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Lee‐Ling Sharon Ong

  65 shared

• Roger D. Kamm

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  57 shared

• Sahan C. B. Herath

  Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology

  41 shared

• Peter C. Y. Chen

  National University of Singapore

  37 shared

• Hai Zhu

  Anhui Medical University

  36 shared

• Matthew J. Lang

  Vanderbilt University

  36 shared

• Debasis Banik

  University of Cambridge

  36 shared

• Ellis L. Reinherz

  Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

  36 shared

Labs

• MIT Department of Mechanical EngineeringPI

Education

• Ph.D, Precision Engineering

  Kyoto University

  1978

Awards & honors

• Best Paper Award, Aug. 1979 Society of Instrument and Contro…
• Best Paper Award Aug. 1984 Society of Instrument and Control…
• SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award Sept. 198…
• O.Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award, May 1985 American Control Co…
• Y.Sawargi Best Paper Award, May 1988 Japanese Association of…

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