Ranjan Mukherjee

About

Ranjan Mukherjee is a distinguished robotics and control systems researcher whose work spans nonholonomic motion planning, space robotics, spherical mobile robots, and surgical haptics. He is perhaps best known for his foundational contributions to the path planning of free-flying space robots, recognizing that angular momentum conservation introduces nonholonomic constraints that can be cleverly exploited to control vehicle orientation alongside manipulator joints — work that has accumulated nearly 600 citations across its most prominent iterations. His early investigations into nonholonomic redundancy further expanded the theoretical toolkit available for underactuated space manipulator design, offering practical pathways to reduce mass and power demands in orbital systems. Mukherjee also pioneered spherical mobile robot research, addressing the classical ball-plate motion planning problem and developing practical control strategies for spherical platforms, collectively attracting over 200 citations. His 2005 shared-control haptic interface framework for minimally invasive surgical training (175 citations) demonstrated his versatility, translating control theory insights into meaningful medical applications. Additional contributions to miniature climbing robots and hybrid impedance-admittance control frameworks round out a career defined by bridging elegant mathematical formulations with real-world robotic challenges, making his work essential reading for researchers in autonomous systems and robotic motion planning.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Nonholonomic path planning of space robots via bi-directional approach

   315 citations · 2002
2. 2
   Nonholonomic path planning of space robots via a bidirectional approach

   279 citations · 1991
3. 3
   A shared-control approach to haptic interface design for minimally invasive telesurgical training

   175 citations · 2005
4. 4
   Climbing the walls [robots]

   140 citations · 2002
5. 5
   A Hybrid System Framework for Unified Impedance and Admittance Control

   124 citations · 2014
6. 6
   Motion Planning for a Spherical Mobile Robot: Revisiting the Classical Ball-Plate Problem

   115 citations · 2002
7. 7
   Simple motion planning strategies for spherobot: a spherical mobile robot

   107 citations · 2003
8. 8
   Exploiting nonholonomic redundancy of free-flying space robots

   81 citations · 1993
9. 9
   Control of free-flying underactuated space manipulators to equilibrium manifolds

   72 citations · 1993
10. 10
    Nonholonomic path planning of space robots

    70 citations · 2003

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links