Nitish Kumar Mandal

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Nitish Kumar Mandal is a pioneering researcher in the field of robotic manipulation, with a primary focus on contact stability and force control strategies for robotic systems. His work addresses a fundamental challenge in robotics: achieving stable, reliable contact between manipulators and their environments—whether stiff or compliant—during tasks such as grasping, pushing, or assembly. Mandal’s most influential paper, “Control strategies for robotic contact tasks: An experimental study” (1995, 35 citations), proposes a unified control framework that resolves the notorious contact instability problem, enabling robots to transition smoothly from free motion to constrained contact. He further advanced this area through experimental evaluations of compliance in impact control (2002, 9 citations) and explicit force control strategies for diverse environments (2002, 7 citations). By systematically testing simple yet effective control approaches, Mandal provided clear, reproducible insights that demystified ambiguous results in the literature. His work has had lasting impact on the design of force-controlled robots, particularly in manufacturing and service robotics, where safe and precise physical interaction is critical. Mandal’s contributions remain essential reading for researchers developing robust, real-world robotic systems.