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About

Garrison L. H. Johnston is a robotics researcher whose work centers on enabling safe, effective human-robot interaction in close-quarters and confined environments. His primary research areas include continuum robotics, multi-modal sensing, and torque-limited manipulation. Johnston’s major contributions lie in the design of multi-modal sensor arrays for continuum robots, which simultaneously provide contact detection, force sensing, and proximity awareness—critical for safe operation alongside humans. His most cited work, “A Multi-Modal Sensor Array for Human–Robot Interaction and Confined Spaces Exploration Using Continuum Robots” (2021, 22 citations), along with a closely related 2019 paper (21 citations), establishes a foundation for active safety in semi-structured spaces. He has also advanced manipulation planning through contact with torque-limited arms (2023, 7 citations), addressing the inherent trade-off between safety and payload. More recently, Johnston has explored wire-wrapped cam mechanisms for collaborative robots and derived analytic compliance models for continuum robots using Lie group theory. His work on multi-modal gesture recognition from surgical video and tool kinematics (2025) points toward applications in surgical automation. With a growing citation record and a focus on practical, safety-critical robotics, Johnston is shaping the future of collaborative and surgical robotic systems.