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About

Ana Sakura Zainal Abidin is a robotics and automation researcher whose work spans two compelling and socially impactful domains: in-pipe robotic systems and rehabilitation robotics. With a body of research accumulating over 80 citations, she has made meaningful contributions to the development of practical robotic solutions for real-world challenges. Her most recognized work focuses on in-pipe robotics, where she has led the development of cleaning devices, cornering mechanisms, and specialized track wheels designed to navigate complex pipeline networks used across water, oil, and gas industries. Her 2015 paper on in-pipe cleaning devices alone has garnered 27 citations, establishing her as a credible voice in pipeline maintenance automation. A particularly innovative extension of this work explores energy harvesting from the rotating motion of in-pipe robots, addressing the critical challenge of sustained power supply in autonomous systems. Equally notable is her commitment to assistive healthcare technology. Zainal Abidin has developed upper limb rehabilitation robot prototypes aimed at supporting stroke patients in home and rural settings, where access to professional therapists remains limited. Complementing these efforts, her research into hybrid PID controllers tuned with iterative learning algorithms demonstrates her technical depth in intelligent control systems for flexible robotic manipulators, broadening the applicability of her engineering innovations.