Devendra Garg

Professor Garg's areas of interest include modeling, simulation, and control of dynamic systems and robotics. In particular, his research deals with characterization and control of nonlinear phenomena in physical systems such as robots, automated manufacturing, and high-speed ground transportation. In the area of robotics, he is interested in the design of feedback controllers using the concepts of modern control theory. In the area of high-speed ground transportation, he has conducted research on dynamics and control of ground-based, air-cushion and magnetically levitated vehicles.

One challenging area of research which Professor Garg is currently
pursuing deals with the coordination and control of two robots
handling a large structural object performing a series of intricate
maneuvers in a confined work space. Analytical development of path
planning and collision avoidance strategies and their practical
implementation are being carried out in the Robotics
and Manufacturing Automation (RAMA) laboratory. Two ABB Industrial
grade six-degree-of freedom revolute jointed robots are available
for these experiments. Major challenges related to this research
effort include the identification and design of techniques for
incorporating sensory data in the control algorithm, modeling the
nonlinear dynamics of the manipulators, and the development of
intelligent and adaptive control schemes for the coordination of
multiple arms in the presence of unknown parameters and payload
variations. Another area of research that Professor Garg is actively pursuing is sensor modeling, data acquisition and management, and data fusion in the context of swarm robotics. For the experimental work in this area, the Robot Control Laboratory has a number of KheperaII robots, LADAR sensors, and vision sensors.