S. Hayati

About

S. Hayati is a pioneering robotics researcher whose career spans foundational contributions to robot calibration, cooperative manipulation, medical robotics, and space exploration systems. Working primarily at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Hayati has shaped core methodologies that underpin modern robotic systems across multiple domains. Among his most influential contributions is his development of systematic methods for estimating and correcting geometric link parameter errors in serial manipulators, dramatically improving the absolute positioning accuracy of robot arms — work that has garnered over 650 combined citations and remains foundational in robot calibration literature. His landmark 1988 study on CT-guided stereotactic brain surgery, with over 1,250 citations, demonstrated how a precisely controlled robotic arm could enhance neurosurgical precision, bridging robotics and medicine in a groundbreaking way. Hayati also extended hybrid position/force control theory to multi-arm cooperative robotic systems, enabling coordinated manipulation among multiple robots — a contribution cited over 330 times. His later work at JPL explored teleoperation architectures, hyper-redundant "serpentine" robots for inspection tasks, and even planetary hopping robots, reflecting a remarkable breadth of innovation. Collectively, his publications have accumulated well over 2,700 citations, cementing his legacy as a versatile and visionary robotics engineer.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   A robot with improved absolute positioning accuracy for CT guided stereotactic brain surgery

   1,257 citations · 1988
2. 2
   Robot arm geometric link parameter estimation

   338 citations · 1983
3. 3
   Hybrid position/Force control of multi-arm cooperating robots

   332 citations · 1986
4. 4
   Improving the absolute positioning accuracy of robot manipulators

   321 citations · 1985
5. 5
   Design and implementation of a robot control system with traded and shared control capability

   138 citations · 2003
6. 6
   The JPL Serpentine Robot: a 12-DOF system for inspection

   106 citations · 2002
7. 7
   Robot geometry calibration

   103 citations · 2003
8. 8
   A hopping robot for planetary exploration

   71 citations · 1999
9. 9
   A testbed for a unified teleoperated-autonomous dual-arm robotic system

   41 citations · 2002
10. 10
    An Overview of KALI: a System to Program and Control Cooperative Manipulators

    36 citations · 1989

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links