John E. McInroy

Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering

Room 5028, Engineering Building
University of Wyoming
College of Engineering and Applied Science
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Dept. 3295
1000 E. University Avenue
Laramie, WY 82071
mcinroy@uwyo.edu
Phone: 307.766.6137
Fax: 307.766.2248

Education:

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

Areas of Expertise: Robotics, Automatic Control

Developing ultra-precise and efficient motion control for precision pointing, vibration isolation, and vibration suppression. Applications include robots, aircraft, spacecraft, and manufacturing. Co-author with J.C. Musto and G.N. Saridis of monograph text, Reliable Plan Selection by Intelligent Machines, 1995.

Related Experience

• University of Pennsylvania, Visiting Researcher, GRASP Laboratory, Fall 1998
• NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Summer Faculty Fellow, Summers 95-96
• NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Graduate Student Researchers Program,6/90-8/90;6/89-8/89
• XEROX Corporation, Technical Intern/Consulting Engineer, 6/86-8/90

Recent Publications and Presentations:

1. Farhad Jafari and John E. McInroy, ``Orthogonal Gough-Stewart Platforms for Micromanipulation," IEEE Trans. on Robotics and Automation, Vol. 19, No. 3, August 2003.
2. Yixin Chen, John E. McInroy, and Yong Yi, ``Optimal, Fault-Tolerant Mappings to Achieve Secondary Goals without Compromising Primary Performance," Accepted to the IEEE Trans. on Robotics and Automation, December 2002.
3. H. Lin and J.E. McInroy, ``Adaptive Sinusoidal Disturbance Cancellation for Precise Pointing of Stewart Platforms," IEEE Trans. on Control Systems Technology, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 267-272, March 2003.
4. Yixin Chen and J.E. McInroy, ``Decoupled Control of Flexure Jointed Hexapods Using Estimated Joint Space Mass-Inertia Matrix," Accepted to the IEEE Transaction on Control Systems Technology, February 2003
5. Yixin Chen and J.E. McInroy, ``Estimation of Symmetric, Positive Definite Matrices from Imperfect Measurements," IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control, Vol. 47, No. 10, October, 2002
6. J.E. McInroy, ``Design and Modeling of Flexure Jointed Hexapods for Control Purposes," IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 95-99, March 2002
7. J.E. McInroy and S.F. Legowski, ``Using Power Measurements to Diagnose Degradations in Motor Drivepower Systems: A Case Study of Oilfield Pump Jacks," IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, Vol. 37, No. 6, November/December 2001, pp. 1-8.
8. J. E. McInroy and J. C. Hamann, "Design and control of flexure jointed hexapods," IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, vol. 16, pp. 372--381, August 2000.
9. J. E. McInroy, G. W. Neat, and J. F. O'Brien, "A robotic approach to fault tolerant, precision pointing," IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, vol. 6, pp. 24--31, December 1999.
10. J. E. McInroy, J. F. O'Brien, and G. W. Neat, "Precise, fault tolerant pointing using a Stewart platform," IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, vol. 4, pp. 91--95, March 1999.
11. J.E. McInroy and Sumeet Aphale, ``Optimal Filters from Task Velocities to Joint Velocities Including Both Position and Velocity Limits," Accepted, 2003 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control
12. F. Jafari and J.E. McInroy, ``Transfer Matrices of Orthogonal Gough-Stewart Platforms," Accepted, 2003 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control
13. H. Lin, J.E. McInroy and J.C. Hamann , ``Design of Motion Control Systems with Positive Force/Torque Feedback Using Mu-Synthesis," American Control Conference, pp. 3955-3960, June 2003, Denver, CO.
14. Y. Chen and J.E. McInroy, ``A Task Space Redundancy-Based Scheme for Motion Planning," American Control Conference, pp. 3435-3441, June 2003, Denver, CO.
15. K.M. Cowden, D.S. Bishop, D.E. Walrath, and J.E McInroy, ``Granular-Filled Composite Struts for Increased Damping in Hexapod Applications," SPIE International Symposium on Smart Structures and Materials, March 2003, Newport Beach, CA.
16. J.E McInroy, ``Properties of Orthogonal Stewart Platforms," SPIE International Symposium on Smart Structures and Materials, March 2003, Newport Beach, CA.
17. Yixin Chen and John E. McInroy, ``Estimating Symmetric, Positive Definite Matrices in Robotic Control," IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 4269-4274, May 2002, Washington, D.C.
18. Y. Yi, J. McInroy, and Y. Chen, "General over-constrained rigid multibody systems: Differential kinematics, and fault tolerance," in SPIE International Symposium on Smart Structures and Materials, (San Diego, California), March 2002.
19. J. McInroy and F. Jafari, "State-of-the-art and open problems in stabilizing platforms for pointing and tracking," in SPIE International Symposium on Smart Structures and Materials, (San Diego, California), March 2002.
20. X. Li, J. Hamann, and J. McInroy, "Simultaneous vibration isolation and pointing control of flexure jointed hexapods," in SPIE International Symposium on Smart Structures and Materials, (Newport Beach, California), March 2001.
21. Y. Chen and J. E. McInroy, "Identification and decoupling control of flexure jointed hexapods," in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, (San Francisco, CA), pp. 1936--1941, 2000.
22. X. Li, J. McInroy, and J. Hamann, "Optimal fault tolerant control of flexure jointed hexapods for applications requiring less than six degrees of freedom," in IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control, (Sydney, Australia), pp. 3337--3338, December 2000.
23. H. Lin and J. McInroy, "Adaptive sinusoidal disturbance cancellation strategy for pointing applications," in IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control, (Sydney, Australia), pp. 1451--1452, December 2000.
24. J. E. McInroy, "Dynamic modeling of flexure jointed hexapods for control purposes," in IEEE Conference on Control Applications, (Kona, Hawaii), pp. 508--513, August 1999.
25. J. E. McInroy and J. C. Hamann, "Control of flexure jointed hexapods," in IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control, (Phoenix, AZ), pp. 3863--3868, December 1999.

Grants and Honors

• "Active Flutter Suppression Using Cooperative, High Frequency, Dynamic Resonant Aero-Effectors," with W. Armstrong (PI), J. Naughton, and W. Lindberg, Air Force, 6/03-5/06, $494,000
• "High Precision, High Frequency, Fault Tolerant Manipulation of Multiple Payloads Aboard a Moving Bus," with F. Jafari, Missile Defense Agency, 4/02-4/05, $339,323
• "Fault Tolerant High Precision Pointing, Vibration Isolation, and Vibration Absorption Using Flexured Parallel Kinematic Machines," with J.C. Hamann and A.W. Peck, the Ballistic Missiles Defense Organization, 4/00-8/03, $340,674
• "Forming New Linkages Between UW, JPL, and MSFC Hexapod Vibration Isolation Programs," with J.W. Pierre and F. Jafari, NASA EPSCoR, March 2000, 5/00-8/01 $66,371.
• "Efficient and Precise Feedback Control of Large Motors Renewal 2," with S. Legowski, S. Ula, S. Muknahallipatna, and J. Pierre, DOE EPSCoR, 9/99-9/01. $178,000.
• "Space Based, Long Distance Laser Pointing and Tracking," with Jerry Hamann, the Ballistic Missiles Defense Organization, 11/97-11/00, $340,611
• "Efficient and Precise Feedback Control of Large Motors Renewal," with S. Legowski, S. Ula, S. Muknahallipatna, J. Pierre, and B. Wilamowski, DOE, 10/97-10/99, $183,861
• "High Precision Pointing and Vibration Isolation for DoD Applications," with J. Hamann, Ballistic Missiles Defense Organization, 9/96-9/99, $296,764
• "Efficient and Precise Feedback Control of Large Motors", with S. Legowski and S. Ula, DOE, 10/95-10/97, $80,759
• Outstanding Graduate Research and Teaching Award, UW College of Engineering, 2001
• Named one of ten 1993 Outstanding IEEE Branch Counselors throughout the global IEEE organization.
• University of Wyoming Excellence in Student Advising Award, 1997 and 2000.