Frank Nickols Website

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ABOUT ME

My Work Bench

Hello, I'm Frank Nickols, an Associate Professor of Robotics and Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Dhofar University, Salalah in the Sultanate of Oman. It is always sunny and warm here and the landscape of Oman is stunning and very green in many places. Not what you think when you look at the map of this area and see just sandy yellow colour. This website is created for students and anybody who likes robots or smart products.

This section is aimed to give students an idea of who they are working with when it comes to supervision of final year projects and graduate student research. It lists my education and work experience as well as patents and publications I have made. In a nutshell your potential supervisor sees his area of engineering research as the making of things, or seeing things move via real-time microcomputer control or programming microcomputers to solve problems in real-time (like computer vision) without necessarily seeing things move (this comes later).

The research I do is mainly concerned with:
(i) complex mechatronic systems requiring difficult mechanical problems to solve. The latest quest is to solve the control of high speed (about 5Hz) reciprocatingcomplex power actuators (flapping wing bat robot). (ii) the development of highly efficient integer number algorithms for the control of multiple actuator and sensor systems
(iii) the management of information flow in complex mechatronic systems

More information about my research interests can be found in the Interests Section

My mission:

(i)To concentrate on research by experimentation that uses real hardware and not on simulation exercises. To be extremely serious about constructing novel physical prototypes of high quality that means overcoming very challenging difficulties. Only this way is it possible to develop new theories and then go on to make significant advances in engineering innovation and engineering research. Without physical prototypes there can be no inspiration or stimulation of new theories and no evidence to confirm or otherwise new theories.

(ii)To lead from the front by making prototypes myself and to expect my students to do the same.

(iii)To develop new Product Design Practices that (i) increase the creativity of the designer and (ii) produce prototypes more quickly and (iii) these prototypes are close to the final product that goes into production. (This mission is an inevitable spin-off from the fact that for every new prototype, I personally conceptualise it top-down, then design it in detail bottom-up to the last tolerance, and then manufacture every part in detail myself on cnc milling machine and lathe and then assemble every component.)

This is one of the machines that I use the most to make prototypes. The other machine is a manual lathe. This one is a five-sided, semi-cnc milling machine. It has five axes, two of which, X and Y, are under cnc control and two manual axes which are a rotary table and rotary tilt, B and C axes. The Z axis is controllable but cannot be synchronised with the X and Y axes during machining so you have work out how to use the other axes to get the shape that you want. You can use the machine as a manual machine as well, just by pressing buttons. I must admit that it's just great to sit down comfortably and do everything by pressing buttons. Now I feel like a dentist because I sit down and reach over to the workpiece and then sit back and do the programming. Before I used this machine I was using a standard toolroom milling machine which is fine but uncomfortable. The machine above is great because, for example, it can circularly interpolate spigots for bearings so I can "one-hit" machine many parts. Previously I had to use a lathe to turn spigots and then screw them to the main component. But I also love the interactive programming ability of the machine. It also feels great when you can work out how to machine on 5 sides and then just part off without any extra machining except for hand de-burring. It's hard work making things but later you can luxuriate in writing software for the robot in order to bring it to life. Actually both making things and writing software are hard work but in a different way. Both also are intellectually demanding but in a different way.