Ad Spiers

Adam 'Ad' Spiers is a lecturer in Robotics and Machine Learning in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. He leads the Manipulation and Touch Lab.

His main research focus is on robot manipulation, where he takes inspiration from biological systems to develop new robotic hand hardware, sensing and control approaches. He also conducts research in upper-limb prosthetics, human hand function and handheld shape-changing haptic interfaces. The latter topic is primarily related to providing non-visual navigation assistance to pedestrians.

Prior to joining Imperial he conducted robotics research at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Yale University, Bristol Robotics Laboratory, the Joint European Torus (JET) and The University of Reading.

Publications

Journals

• Spiers AJ, Young E, Kuchenbecker KJ, 2023, The S-BAN: insights into the perception of shape-changing haptic interfaces via virtual pedestrian navigation, Acm Transactions on Computer-human Interaction, Vol:30, ISSN:1073-0516, Pages:1-31
• Spiers A, Cochran J, Resnik L, et al., 2021, Quantifying prosthetic and intact limb use in upper limb amputees via egocentric video: an unsupervised, at-home study, Ieee Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics, Vol:3, ISSN:2576-3202, Pages:463-484
• Gueorguiev D, Javot B, Spiers A, et al., 2022, Larger Skin-Surface Contact Through a Fingertip Wearable Improves Roughness Perception, 13th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications (EuroHaptics), SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG, Pages:171-179, ISSN:0302-9743
• Zhou X, Spiers AJ, 2022, E-TRoll: Tactile Sensing and Classification via A Simple Robotic Gripper for Extended Rolling Manipulations, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE, Pages:11826-11833, ISSN:2153-0858