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Yasumasa Shoji is a pioneering researcher in the field of robotic manipulation, with a primary focus on the stable control of robotic manipulators during contact and impact tasks. His work addresses one of the most challenging nonlinear problems in robotics: ensuring stability when a manipulator collides with or makes contact with an object or surface. Shoji’s major contribution is the systematic application of the Lyapunov direct method to design control laws that guarantee system stability even in the presence of collision phenomena, which inherently involve energy loss and dynamic discontinuities. His seminal 1991 paper, "Impact control of grasping," with 45 citations, established the foundation for understanding the stabilization effect of collision in manipulator-object systems. This work, along with his subsequent studies on stable contact force control for single-link, multi-link, and 3-dimensional redundant manipulators, has provided a unified theoretical framework for contact tasks. Shoji’s research has had a lasting impact on the design of robots that must safely and reliably interact with their environment, influencing fields from industrial automation to assistive robotics. His rigorous analytical approach and experimental validations remain essential references for engineers and researchers working on force control and collision-tolerant robotic systems.