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About

A.M. Al-Fahed’s research sits at the intersection of robotics, contact mechanics, and optimization, with a focus on the complex physics of grasping and manipulation. His major contributions center on applying the Linear Complementarity Problem (LCP) to model unilateral contact and friction in robotic grippers—a framework that elegantly handles the rigid body displacements and rotations inherent in grasping tasks. His 1991 paper on this topic, with 52 citations, remains a foundational reference in the field. Al-Fahed’s work distinguishes between “hard” and “soft” fingered grippers, offering a unified mathematical approach to both, as detailed in his 1991 paper (32 citations). He also tackled the optimal control of multifingered hands, formulating the grasping problem as an LCP to determine necessary and sufficient conditions for stable grasps (1994, 35 citations). A notable achievement is his development of a new numerical implementation for multifingered grippers (1992), which improved computational efficiency. With a career spanning theoretical rigor and practical robotics, Al-Fahed’s research has shaped how engineers design dexterous, force-controlled robotic hands, influencing both industrial automation and prosthetics.