The presentation consists of two parts:

Part I,  Screw system theory and Lie algebra in mechanisms, robotics and manufacture.

Part II, 21st century mechanisms and robotics

Bio:

Professor Dai received his BSc in Mechanical Engineering in 1982 and his MSc in Machine Systems in 1984 at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai. He was appointed Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering in 1985 and joined the University of Salford in the UK in late 1980s as a research scholar in the area of robotics, kinematics and mechanisms. He received his PhD in 1993 and continued his employment with the same University as Post-Doctoral Research Fellow from 1993. From 1996, he was a leading member and coordinator in an international project on packaging at Unilever Research as project manager/Senior Industrial Research Fellow and subsequently spent three months in Makino Robotics Laboratory at Yamanashi University in Japan. He was appointed in 1997 Senior Lecturer in Robotics and Mechanisms at the University of Sunderland and joined King's College London, University of London in 1999.

Professor Dai is Chair in Mechanisms and Robotics and Head of Centre for Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems of King’s College London, University of London. He has published over 160 refereed journal and conference papers and has been awarded research grants and contracts totaling over 1.6million GBP. He was the recipient of 1998 'ASME mechanism committee biennial Best Paper Award' at the 25th ASME Biennial Mechanisms Conference in which he proposed the 'metamorphic mechanisms'.

Professor Dai is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), and a member of the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). He is also member of the ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Committee, member of the IMechE Mechatronics, Informative and Control Group Board, member of the EPSRC Peer College, evaluator and panelist for China NSFC and Canada NSERC, and evaluator and panelist of European FP7 Programme. He serves as Associate Editor of Robotica and Associate Editor of ASME Transaction: Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics. Jian Dai's teaching covers applied mechanics, robotics, mechatronics, instrumentation and sensors, mechanism synthesis, computer-aided-design, and computer-aided-manufacturing. His research interests cover aspects of theoretical kinematics, mechanisms, robotics and biomechanical science. Specific subjects of his interests are manipulation and grasping, object and material handling, underactuated manipulators, redundantly actuated mechanisms, multifingered robot hand, metamorphic mechanisms, robotics in rehabilitation engineering and medical engineering, and robotics in material handling and in industrial packaging.