Michael Shomin

About

Michael Shomin is a robotics researcher whose work spans two compelling domains: aerial robotics and dynamically stable mobile robots. He made early and influential contributions to the field of aerial manipulation, co-authoring foundational work on quadrotor grasping and transport that has collectively garnered over 1,000 citations. His 2012 paper on cooperative grasping using multiple quadrotors (457 citations) and his widely recognized work on aerial gripper design, modeling, and control (378 citations) helped establish the theoretical and practical groundwork for unmanned aerial vehicles capable of physically interacting with their environment — a capability now central to modern drone research. Shomin also made significant contributions to the ballbot platform, a person-sized robot that balances dynamically on a single spherical wheel. His work addressed trajectory planning, slope operation, and center-of-mass offsets, advancing the robot's practical deployment in real-world environments. Notably, he extended the ballbot's capabilities into human-robot interaction, developing methods for sit-to-stand assistance and studying how large dynamic robots should safely approach people during collaborative tasks. His research reflects a consistent focus on making complex robotic systems practical, safe, and genuinely useful for human environments.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Cooperative Grasping and Transport Using Multiple Quadrotors

   457 citations · 2012
2. 2
   Design, modeling, estimation and control for aerial grasping and manipulation

   378 citations · 2011
3. 3
   Design, modeling, estimation and control for aerial grasping and manipulation

   234 citations · 2011
4. 4
   Sit-to-stand assistance with a balancing mobile robot

   30 citations · 2015
5. 5
   Fast, dynamic trajectory planning for a dynamically stable mobile robot

   21 citations · 2014
6. 6
   Differentially flat trajectory generation for a dynamically stable mobile robot

   21 citations · 2013
7. 7
   Initial results for a ballbot driven with a spherical induction motor

   15 citations · 2016
8. 8
   Operation of the ballbot on slopes and with center-of-mass offsets

   14 citations · 2015
9. 9
   Human-approaching trajectories for a person-sized balancing robot

   7 citations · 2014
10. 10
    Navigation and Physical Interaction with Balancing Robots

    5 citations · 2016

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links