Nicola J. Ferrier Associate Professor Address/E-mail Program Affiliations Courses Education Fields of Interest Publications Summary Files and Links For additional information, see my

Contact Information

2246 Mechanical Engineering Building 1513 University Avenue Madison, WI 53706-1572

Tel: 608/265-8793 Fax: 608/265-2316 E-mail: ferrier@engr.wisc.edu

Program Affiliations

• Mechanical Engineering
• Biomedical Engineering

• Biomedical Engineering Center for Translational Research
• Manufacturing Systems Engineering Program

Courses

• ME 240: Dynamics
• ME 439: Introduction to Robotics
• ME 739: Advanced Automation and Robotics

Education

• BS, 1984, University of Alberta
• MS, 1987, University of Alberta
• MS, 1988, Harvard University
• PhD, 1992, Harvard University

Fields of Interest

• robotics
• intelligent systems
• computer vision
• automation
• sensing
• medical image analysis

Publications

See http://robotics.engr.wisc.edu/pages/publications.html

Summary

Professor Ferrier's interests are in the use of computer vision/imagery to control robots, machinery, and devices, with applications as diverse as medical systems, manufacturing, and navigation. The use of visual feedback in the control of a robot end-effector position is called visual servoing. Visual servoing can provide a superior robot interface than teach pendants or tele-operated systems and is advantageous when precise fixturing is impractical or impossible. In image based servoing, control is effected in the image which has the advantage of not having to reconstruct 3D information about the robot's environment, and image based control laws exist that are not overly sensitive to camera calibration errors. Her work has been applied to visual monitoring of polymer processing, visual control of crystal formation processes and visual monitoring of nano-scale assembly processes.

A key competency required in order to use vision for manipulation is to be able to robustly analyze the images to locate and track a target object. Ferrier’s expertise in image analysis has been applied in ophthalmological image analysis, including automated recognition of physiological structures in slit lamp images of the lens, automated measurement of vessel caliber in fundus images, analysis of retro-illumination photographs for classification of cataracts and analysis of Schiempflug videographic sequences.

Past projects include work in visual and tactile sensor design and operation, a system for automated traffic monitoring, and the construction of a robot "head" with a 7-degree-of-freedom system in which the two "eyes" (cameras) could pan, tilt and verge much like the human eye.

Ferrier teaches courses in dynamics, robotics and control systems.

Files and Links of Interest

• http://robotics.engr.wisc.edu

Copyright 2007 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System Date last modified: 10-Sep-2007 Content by: ferrier@engr.wisc.edu Accessibility Web services Thank you for visiting http://www.engr.wisc.edu/me/faculty/ferrier_nicola.html UPDATE PROFILE