K. Harold Yae

Papers

Total Citations

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About

K. Harold Yae is a foundational figure in robot dynamics and control, best known for advancing the theoretical and practical understanding of compliant motion and adaptive control. His most influential work, "Identification of Unknown Payload and Environmental Parameters for Robot Compliant Motion" (1992, 20 citations), addresses a critical challenge in robotics: enabling a manipulator to interact safely and precisely with an unknown environment. Yae developed a method to simultaneously estimate the inertial parameters of a rigid-body payload and the unknown characteristics of the constraint surface, a key step for robust computed-torque control. This work has been essential for applications in assembly and manufacturing where robots must adapt to changing conditions. In a second highly cited paper (2005, 9 citations), Yae resolved a long-standing theoretical gap by proving that the Newton-Euler formulation for open-chain robots can yield a Coriolis-centrifugal matrix that satisfies the skew-symmetric property, a requirement for a class of regressor-based adaptive controllers. This contribution unified two major modeling frameworks—Lagrange-Euler and Newton-Euler—and provided a rigorous foundation for designing stable adaptive control laws. Yae’s research remains a cornerstone for students and engineers working on robot manipulation, system identification, and nonlinear control.