Taqi Hamoda

H.B.Sc. Computer Science

University of Toronto

t.hamoda [at] mail.utoronto.ca

Hello, and welcome! 👋

I’m currently an undergraduate researcher at the University of Toronto’s Continuum Robotics Lab (CRL), where I’ve had the privilege of working under the guidance of Dr. Jessica Burgner-Kahrs. My current research focuses on numerical optimization and static modeling of Continuum Robots. I am also involved in developing software for the Open Continuum Robotics Initiative - a project that aims to make Continuum Robotics more accessible for all by providing open source software and hardware along with educational articles and tutorials.

I’ve been fortunate to receive recognition for my academic endeavors, including the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Undergraduate Research Grant and the prestigious NSERC’s Undergraduate Student Research Award.

Hobbies

Outside of work, you might find me enjoying a Salsa social or at the local public library trying to learn a new language (estoy aprendiendo español). I also love biking, traveling, and reading but, to be honest, who doesn’t. 😅

I am lucky to have wonderful people in my life who continue to support me throughout this journey. I am still figuring life out but if you think that I could be helpful in anyway, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

news

Apr 24, 2023	The Open Continuum Robotics – One Actuation Module to Create them All paper has been published on arXiv.
Apr 11, 2023	Recieved the NSERC’s Undergraduate Student Research Award.
Jan 8, 2023	Co-founded and became president of the UTM Latin Dance Club.
Dec 15, 2021	Recieved the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Undergraduate Research Grant.
Sep 17, 2021	Aqua Drone has moved on to the final round of the Hatchery’s Nest Program.

selected publications

2023

Open Continuum Robotics – One Actuation Module to Create them All

Reinhard M. Grassmann, Chengnan Shentu, Taqi Hamoda, Puspita Triana Dewi, and Jessica Burgner-Kahrs

arXiv preprint, arXiv:2304.11850, Apr 2023

Abs arXiv Bib HTML PDF Website

Experiments on physical continuum robot are the gold standard for evaluations. Currently, as no commercial continuum robot platform is available, a large variety of early-stage prototypes exists. These prototypes are developed by individual research groups and are often used for a single publication. Thus, a significant amount of time is devoted to creating proprietary hardware and software hindering the development of a common platform, and shifting away scarce time and efforts from the main research challenges. We address this problem by proposing an open-source actuation module, which can be used to build different types of continuum robots. It consists of a high-torque brushless electric motor, a high resolution optical encoder, and a low-gear-ratio transmission. For this letter, we create three different types of continuum robots. In addition, we illustrate, for the first time, that continuum robots built with our actuation module can proprioceptively detect external forces. Consequently, our approach opens untapped and under-investigated research directions related to the dynamics and advanced control of continuum robots, where sensing the generalized flow and effort is mandatory. Besides that, we democratize continuum robots research by providing open-source software and hardware with our initiative called the Open Continuum Robotics Project†, to increase the accessibility and reproducibility of advanced methods.
@article{arXiv.2304.11850, title = {Open Continuum Robotics – One Actuation Module to Create them All}, author = {Grassmann, Reinhard M. and Shentu, Chengnan and Hamoda, Taqi and Dewi, Puspita Triana and Burgner-Kahrs, Jessica}, journal = {arXiv preprint, arXiv:2304.11850}, year = {2023}, month = apr, publisher = {arXiv}, doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2304.11850}, }