My mainstream research is about physical interaction of robots with humans, objects, and environment and I am particularly interested in physically assistive robotics. One of the domains that I am active in is medical robotics, robotic surgery, and laparoscopy (AILap, 4PhD projects) in medicine. The other domain is industrial robotics, particularly the industrial tasks that require automation for dangerous tasks such as underwater robotics (AEROSUB, UNITE, ORCA projects), and automation of industrial laser alignment where experts perform fine screw driving to align optical components (DeMILIO), and for assembly of products with unconventional parts (SMART-CPM).   

In a wide spectrum of labour intensive industrial and daily-life tasks human skill, agility, dexterity, experience, and adaptivity are indispensable. I believe a thorough impact of the robotics research in labour intensive tasks will be possible when we close the loop of understanding the task execution of human workers and automating those using our machines and robots. I call this “capturing the human skills for robotic automation”.

I have been working on realizing this vision in the domains of medical robotics and industrial manufacturing. In the domain of medical robotics I was awarded the EPSRC grant (AILap), which exemplifies my vision of capturing the knowledge of expert skills and using those to program the machines for practical and real-life assistance; in this case, for developing the next-generation laparoscopy trainers that would eliminate the need for an expert surgeon to watch, guide, and teach the novice. The project is in collaboration with and direct involvement of the Surgical Skills Centre in University of Dundee, indicative of its impact. Besides that, we have recently developed in my lab the experimental Robotic Surgery Setup, as a follow-up outcome of my EPSRC First-Grant (UnLapSkill) project, which is targeted towards capturing surgeon skills and developing a widely accessible trainer for robotic surgery.

In the domain of medical robotics, I have also been working on the design and development of medical (robotic) devices such as a robotic hand-exoskeleton for assessment of hand spasticity (in collaboration with a clinical rehabilitation medical doctor), a laser ablation instrument that allows travelling a laser beam on tissue for ablation in surgery, and a wearable exoskeleton prototype to assist nurses. All these research feature aspects of understanding how experts perform and what the experts need and then designing-and-development of systems that address those.

For industrial manufacturing, I have been applying a similar approach in the EPSRC-DeMILIO project, where we investigate how human experts align laser optical devices and then automate the alignment process with machine learned control of actuators and a robotic setup. In another EPSRC Future Manufacturing Systems project (SMART-CPM) we aim at autonomously assembling a solar photovoltaic unit (solar cell), inspiring from how humans assemble the delicate and unconventionally shaped pieces. Both projects are in collaboration with the relevant industries and therefore have great potential for impact in real-life applications.  

In the Cab Front Cleaning Robot project funded by Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) some years ago, we developed an automated surface tracing technology, which turned out to be instrumental in the underwater manipulation work in ORCA project to develop an asset inspection facility with a mobile base robotic manipulator. The achievements contributed to the success of the EPSRC UNITE project with more than £1M Industrial cash contribution. In the UNITE project, the capability of inspection of assets with a mobile based manipulator has been being transferred to a robotic setup of an underwater vessel equipped with an underwater manipulator and will be verified with the industrial equipment and industrial setting. In this domain we also succeeded with the AEROSUB EU Project application, where we will be developing underwater robotic manipulation for cleaning biological fouls from asset surfaces.

I received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Middle East Technical University, Ankara, in 1999, 2001, and 2006. From 2007 to 2012 I was a postdoctoral researcher, successively in Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands; in Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées-ParisTech, France; in Univ. Pierre & Marie Curie - Paris 6, France. In 2012 I received the European Union Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship with my project "Skill Assistance with Robot for Manual Welding". Between 2012 and 2014, I was with Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, with this fellowship. I am an Assistant Professor with the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK, since 2015. My research interests include physical human-robot interaction, assistive robotics, skill assistance, mechatronics design, medical robotics, walking robots, and machine learning. I have been the PI of the EPSRC funded first-grant project "Understanding Laparoscopy Skills for Robotic Training and Assistance" (£124,958), and the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) funded "Cab Front Cleaning Robot Project" (£35,714). Three of my PhD students are partially/fully funded by industry (RACE-UK Atomic Energy Authority, £33,000; RSSB, £136,000). I have been supervising 1 post-doc and 4 PhD students.