I research computational robot design, kinematics, and control. Currently focusing on AI-enhanced synthesis of robot mechanisms for grasping and manipulation.
Pontifical University of Chile, Santiago, Chile (Jan 24 - Jan 28).
Notre Dame SAI Initiative (Aug 2025 - Dec 2025).
Towards developing advanced robot mechanisms that adopt to challenging environments.
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A simple compliant gripper that reconfigures between grasping and sensing modes to overcome the trade-off between power grasp and fingertip sensing solely from motor current feedback. The gripper finds applications in fruit picking including ripeness estimation with up to 90% accuracy.
An assymetric five-bar manipulator exhibits 3.75x increase in payload capacity, 2x increase in dynamic tracking accuracy and at least 3.7x reduction in power consumption compared to conventional manipulators using gearless motors (direct-drive).
Journal and conference proceedings in reverse chronological order.
S. Ramesh, T. Girard and M. Plecnik, "A Simple Compliant Gripper That Reconfigures Between Sensing and Grasping Modes," IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL), vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 3796-3803, March 2026.
doi: 10.1109/LRA.2026.3662656S. Ramesh and M. Plecnik, "A Direct-Drive Gripper Designed by Ellipse Synthesis Across Two Output Modes," in 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Atlanta, GA, USA, 2025, pp. 16478-16484.
doi: 10.1109/ICRA55743.2025.11127705S. Ramesh and M. Plecnik, "Ellipse Synthesis of the Planar 2R Using Convolutional Neural Networks," in Proc. ASME 2025 IDETC-CIE, Volume 5: MESA/MR Conference, Anaheim, CA, USA, Aug. 2025.
doi: 10.1115/DETC2025-169741S. Ramesh and M. Plecnik, "A Direct-drive Five-bar Manipulator with Tuned Directional First-order Kinematics for Low Energy Consumption in Vertical Loading," International Journal for Robotics Research (IJRR), vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 317-338, 2024.
doi: 10.1177/02783649241266852Tutorials and teaching materials from my workshops.