Electrical and Computer Engineering

Education:

• B.S. Aerospace Engineering, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
• M.S. Electrical Engineering, University of Wyoming
• Ph.D. Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Areas of Expertise:

Robotics, Automatic Control

Kinematics, dynamics, and control of parallel mechanisms. Applications include vibration suppression and precision pointing for space/military payloads, and manufacturing.

Related Experience:

MISSILE DEFENSE NATIONAL TEAM SYSTEMS (GENERAL DYNAMICS) - Senior Lead Engineer, 2/02 - 8/03.

GENERAL DYNAMICS - Lead Engineer, 6/01 - 2/02.

NASA JET PROPULSION LABORATORY - Member of Technical Staff, 6/91 - 8/97. Academic Part-Time, 12/89 - 6/91.

Fellowship Awards:

• 1998 DOE Integrated Manufacturing Predoctoral Fellowship
• 1996 NASA Graduate Student Research Program Fellowship
• 1996 University of Wyoming-NASA Space Grant Fellowship

Selected Publications:

• O’Brien, Y. and O’Brien, J., “Variable, Large Feedback Wind Turbine Control Synthesis with Limited Plant Information,” International Conference on Future Technologies in Wind Energy (abstract), London, Ontario, October 2015.
• McInroy, J.E., O’Brien, J.F. and Allias, A.A., “Designing the Dynamics and Control of Fault Tolerant Micromanipulation Systems,” IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics, Vol. 20, No.2, April 2015.
• O’Brien, J.F. and Carruthers, D.J., “Nonlinear Dynamic Compensation for Large-Feedback Control of a Servomechanism with Multiple Nonlinearities,” Control Engineering Practice, Vol 21, p 1531-1541, Nov 2013.
• McInroy, J.E., O’Brien, J.F. and Allias, A.A., “Designing the Dynamics and Control of Fault Tolerant Micromanipulation Systems,” IEEE Mechatronics, accepted Nov 2013.
• Mock, C., Hamilton, Z., Carruthers, D. and O’Brien, J., “Nonlinear Compensation for High Performance Feedback Systems with Actuator Imperfections,” 6^th ASME Annual Dynamic Systems and Control Conference, Palo Alto, CA, October 2013.
• McInroy, J., O’Brien, J. and Allais, A., “Designing Dynamics and Control of Redundant Gough-Stewart Micromanipulators,” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Karlsruhe, Germany, May 2013.
• Allias, A.A., McInroy, J.E., O’Brien, J.F., “Spatial Manipulation Using an Even Number of Parallel Force Actuators,” IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Vol. 28 No 6, pg 1323-1335, December 2012.
• O’Brien, J.F. Frequency-Domain Control Design for High-Performance Systems, Institution of Engineering and Technology, London, UK, 2012.
• Allias, A.A., McInroy, J.E., O’Brien, J.F., “A New Class of Locally Decoupled Gough-Stewart Platform Manipulators,” IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 1301-1306, Vilamoura, Portugal, October 2012.
• O’Brien, J.F., “Trends in Region 3 Control System Performance as Wind Turbine Size Increases,” Journal of Automatic Control and System Engineering, Vol 12, Issue 1, pp. 45-55, June 2012.
• Parkins, J.A. and O’Brien, J.F., “A Modified Command Feedforward Tracking Control System Applied to the PRRR-RR Parallel Mechanism,” Symposium on SPIE Smart Structures and Materials, San Diego, March 2012.
• Yang, Y. and O’Brien, J.F., “A Novel Composition of Two Parallel Robots for 6DOF Workspace,” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Shanghai, China, May 2011.
• Carruthers, D, and O’Brien, J, “Two Degree-of-Freedom Parallel Mechanisms for Vibration Suppression and Tracking,” SPIE Symposium on Smart Structures and Materials, San Diego, March 2011.
• O’Brien, J.F., “A Coordinate-free Method for Finding Constraint Singularities,” International Journal of Robotics and Automation, Vol. 26, Issue 2, February 2011.
• Nelson, J., Carruthers, D. O’Brien, J. and McInroy J., “Design and Control of a 2-DOF Parallel Mechanism Using Prismatic and Revolute Actuators," IASTED International Conference on Robotics and Applications, ,Cambridge, MA, Nov 2010.
• Yang, Y. and O’Brien, J.F., “Singularity-free Design of the 3-UPU Parallel Robot,” IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering, Toronto, ON, August 2010.
• Yang. Y. and O’Brien, J.F., “A Sequential Method for the Singularity Free Workspace Design of a Planar 3-legged Parallel Robot,” Mechanism and Machine Theory, Vol 45, Issue 11, pg 1694-1706, November 2010.
• O’Brien, J.F., “Multi-path Nonlinear Dynamic Compensation for Rudder Roll Stabilization,” Control Engineering Practice, Vol. 17, Issue 12, pg 1405-1414, December 2009.