Soheil Kianzad

K.N.Toosi University of Technology, University of British Columbia

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Soheil Kianzad is a researcher whose work spans the frontiers of soft robotics, haptic interaction, and surgical instrumentation. His research is unified by a drive to create more dexterous, intuitive, and powerful actuation and feedback systems. Kianzad made early contributions to minimally invasive surgery by developing a force-controlled laparoscopy grasper using antagonistic shape memory alloys, a design that aimed to simplify wrist mechanisms while enhancing surgeon dexterity (13 citations). He is perhaps best known for his foundational treatise on highly twisted artificial muscles, exploring thermally driven shape memory alloy yarns and coiled nylon actuators (12 citations). This work opened new perspectives on creating powerful, lightweight actuators with work densities over 100 times greater than mammalian muscle. More recently, Kianzad has investigated active cooling techniques to improve the performance of these coiled nylon actuators for soft robotics applications. Demonstrating a breadth of interest, he also explored robot-mediated haptic collaboration for learning, developing the "AlloHaptic" system to study how force feedback can enhance collaborative learning of linear functions (7 citations). His career reflects a commitment to advancing both the hardware and the human-robot interaction paradigms of next-generation robotic systems.