AffiliationsShort BiographyResearchTeachingA Message for Prospective Students/Postdocs/Visitors Building 550, Room 107 aokamura [snail] stanford [period] edu -> mailto:aokamura [snail] stanford [period] edu Collaborative Haptics in Robotics and Medicine (CHARM) Lab Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiative (E-Wear) Center for Design Research Department of Computer Science Department of Mechanical Engineering Allison M. Okamura received the BS degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994, and the MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University in 1996 and 2000, respectively, all in mechanical engineering. She is currently Professor in the mechanical engineering department at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in computer science. She was previously Professor and Vice Chair of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University. She has been an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics, editor-in-chief of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Conference Editorial Board, an editor of the International Journal of Robotics Research, and co-chair of the IEEE Haptics Symposium.
Her awards include the 2016 Duca Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, 2009 IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics Early Career Award, 2005 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award, and 2004 NSF CAREER Award. She is an IEEE Fellow. Her academic interests include haptics, teleoperation, virtual environments and simulators, medical robotics, neuromechanics and rehabilitation, prosthetics, and engineering education. Outside academia, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two children, running, and playing ice hockey. For more information, please see Allison Okamura's CV (pdf). My research focuses on developing the principles and tools needed to realize advanced robotic and human-machine systems capable of haptic (touch) interaction, particularly for biomedical applications. Haptic systems are designed and studied using both analytical and experimental approaches. Topics of particular interest are: (1) Teleoperation: Devices, models, and control systems that allow human operators to manipulate environments that are remote in scale and/or distance.
(2) Virtual Environments: Models, control systems, and devices that enable compelling touch-based interaction with computers. (3) Robotic manipulation: Robots that physically manipulate their environment or their own shape, incorporating novel designs, sensors, and control systems. Application areas include surgery, simulation and training, rehabilitation, prosthetics, neuromechanics, exploration of hazardous and remote environments, design, and education. Find out more on the CHARM Lab wesbite. See my Google Scholar Page for publications. An important component of my teaching role is mentoring students on research. I am very proud of the accomplishments of my lab members! Thank you for taking the time to look at my web pages. I appreciate your interest in my research and in the activities of our group. Due to the ease of electronic communications and large interest in my research area, I receive an overwhelming number of e-mail messages from prospective students who wish to be involved with my research group.
Unfortunately, there are too many messages for me to give a response to each one. I regret that I cannot reply to messages that are so important to the people who send them, so below I provide some answers to frequently asked questions. Best wishes for your future research career!YOU ARE HERE: LAT HomeCollectionsBusiness Most trade show participants spend hours walking the exhibit hall floors, but at last week's NeCon show, many of the 40,000 attendees spent their time sitting. Based on the myriad chair designs displayed at the Chicago design confab, the quest for a truly comfortable office chair continues in earnest for consumers as well as the industrial designers, anthropologists, psychologists and manufacturers who spend years trying to bring such a seat to market. It's not an easy task, experts say, and it involves millions of dollars and extensive research into kinesiology, or the way in which people move. There are also the realities of people themselves: Some are petite, some morbidly obese.
Some sit on the edge of their seats when they work, and others lean back. And most workers, ergonomics experts agree, sit too much. "If you sit in the wrong posture for too long a period, no chair in the world is going to help you," said Cindy Roth, president of Ergonomic Technologies Corp. "The human body was not meant to sit for two to three hours at a time." The good news: There's a chair for everyone. The bad news: The best chair may be cost-prohibitive. And because companies order chairs in bulk, some employees might get their dream seats while their co-workers experience the same chairs as torture devices. In a survey this year, Staples Inc. found that almost half of people gave the comfort of their office chair a grade of C or lower. More than half said that if they could do one thing to improve their workplace, it would be to ask for a better chair. "A chair is the most intimate piece of furniture you'll ever own," said Mark Schurman, a spokesman at furniture maker Herman Miller Inc. "It's really tricky to find the natural motion.
It's the art and the science, and the challenge is to get both right." The latest chair trends borrow not only from European design but also from the home. The result is chairs with cleaner, simpler lines that have a more residential feel to them. And they can carry high price tags. This month, Haworth Inc. announced a partnership with Crate & Barrel to begin selling a version of its Very Task chair for $999. Herman Miller, which has sold more than 6 million of its Aeron chairs since their 1995 introduction (God sits in one in a 2005 episode of "The Simpsons"), showcased a chair — the $399 Sayl — modeled on the suspension design principles used in the Golden Gate Bridge. There are chairs made for larger users, such as one from Neutral Posture Inc. for people who weigh 300 to 500 pounds. For the environmentally conscious, there are chairs made of recycled content and that are themselves recyclable. The Luce and Leopard chairs from Okamura Corp. lean forward when empty so they can absorb some of the impact as a person sits down.
As a person leans forward to stand, the seat pitches forward again, which makes it difficult to sit on the edge of the seat. The chairs are priced at $730 to $2,400 apiece. Chair manufacturers say that no chair is comfortable for hours on end, and that a combination of sitting and standing at work may produce the best result. Women, Roth said, need to stop crossing their legs, while men need to stop leaning back, putting one leg over the other and balancing a keyboard on their legs. She also recommends a chair with arms. And when it comes to testing a chair, take your time, companies advise. "A quick sit may be the worst test you can do," said Tom DeBoer, a Haworth product manager. "A lot of times the ones that are comfortable initially may not be comfortable all day long." Herman Miller's Schurman agrees: "It's a little bit like buying a bed. Podmolik writes for the Chicago Tribune. Seizure Led to FloJo's DeathHis 104 scores make his caseRestaurant review: South Beverly GrillBrutal Murder by Teen-Age Girls Adds to Britons' ShockComaneci Confirms Suicide Attempt, Magazine Says