Felix Russell
Felix is an ex-PhD student in the Biomechatronics Lab in the Mechanical Engineering department of Imperial College London. He finished his mechanical engineering undergraduate degree at Imperial College in 2016. While he was there he worked on projects on development of an automated tracking camera for materials testing, fluid flow analogies for traffic jams and compliant ligaments within robotic joints.
PhD: Felix’s work follows on from his master’s project on condylar knee designs. His work focuses on the design and testing of anthropomorphic mechanical models of the human knee joint. Included in the mechanical model are the compliant ligaments of the knee, the patella (knee cap) and smooth condyles (joint surfaces). Where possible geometries are been taken directly from studies on human anatomy. He aims to use the model to improve our understanding of the role of compliant ligaments in normal joint function, in particular their role in joint stability and control. In addition, the new technologies developed may be of interest in the development of better knee prosthetics or in walking robots. Specifically designs using a bio derived design may produce gait that looks more human and has lower energy consumption than current methods.
Other work experience: Over the summer of 2014 he interned in the research and development department at Dyson. There he learned a lot from the experienced engineers there and the few months spent there cemented his interest in mechatronic design. At the end of the summer he was offered a graduate job with them (starting in 2016) and went back to work there for four weeks during the summer 2015. During his holidays and in term time weekends he has taught Arduino programming and electronics to classes of 10-16 year olds for www.techcamp.org.uk.
Publications:
Russell, F., Taketa, Y., Kormushev, P., Vaidyanathan, R. and Ellison, P., 2021. Stiffness Modulation in a Humanoid Robotic Leg and Knee. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters and IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation May 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2021.3062355
Russell, F., Kormushev, P., Vaidyanathan, R. and Ellison, P., 2020. The impact of ACL laxity on a bicondylar robotic knee and implications in human joint biomechanics. IEEE transactions on bio-medical engineering. https://doi.org/10.1109/TBME.2020.2971855
Russell, F., Zhu, Y., Hey, W., Vaidyanathan, R. and Ellison, P., 2018. A biomimicking design for mechanical knee joints. Bioinspiration & biomimetics. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-3190/aad39d
Russell, F., Vaidyanathan, R. and Ellison, P., 2018, August. A Kinematic Model for the Design of a Bicondylar Mechanical Knee. In 2018 7th IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (Biorob) (pp. 750-755). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/BIOROB.2018.8487734
Russell, F., Gao, L., Ellison, P. and Vaidyanathan, R., 2017, July. Challenges in using compliant ligaments for position estimation within robotic joints. In Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), 2017 International Conference on (pp. 1471-1476). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICORR.2017.8009455
Email: felix.russell12@imperial.ac.uk
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/felixrussell/