About

Jake Abbott is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and an Adjunct Professor at the Kahlert School of Computing. He serves as the Director of the University of Utah Robotics Center. His professional roles indicate a leadership position in robotics research and education at the University of Utah. The page lists his contact email as jake.abbott@utah.edu and his office and lab locations, but does not provide further details on his specific research focus, background, or key contributions.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Physics
• Engineering
• Classical mechanics
• Mechanical engineering
• Biomedical engineering
• Mechanics
• Materials science
• Medicine
• Acoustics
• Condensed matter physics
• Electrical engineering
• Surgery
• Optics
• Geometry
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Assume a Spherical Cube: Bounding the Force and Torque Induced on a Conductive Nonmagnetic Cube by a Rotating Magnetic Dipole

  IEEE Magnetics Letters · 2026-01-01

  articleSenior author

  A time-varying magnetic field induces electric currents in a conductive object, which in turn induces a force torque wrench on the object that is not due to ferromagnetism. Prior work empirically modeled the wrench induced in a solid sphere by a rotating magnetic dipole (RMD) field, and then used this model to perform contactless manipulation using multiple RMD field sources, motivated by application in on-orbit satellite servicing and space-debris capture. In this letter, we measure the induced wrench on a conductive, non-ferromagnetic cube—which, unlike on a sphere, is not invariant to orientation—in six canonical configurations, and compare it to that of a sphere with identical volume. Results show that such a spherical model provides a reasonable orientation-invariant approximation of a cube. Further, the induced wrench can be bounded by considering the induced wrenches on spheres with ±15% volume.

  PublisherDOI

• Roboticists are grappling with space debris

  Science Robotics · 2025-06-11 · 3 citations

  review1st authorCorresponding

  The serious global need for on-orbit servicing of satellites and remediation of space debris demands robotic solutions.

  PublisherDOI

• Head-mounted surgical robots are an enabling technology for subretinal injections

  Science Robotics · 2025-02-19 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Therapeutic protocols involving subretinal injection, which hold the promise of saving or restoring sight, are challenging for surgeons because they are at the limits of human motor and perceptual abilities. Excessive or insufficient indentation of the injection cannula into the retina or motion of the cannula with respect to the retina can result in retinal trauma or incorrect placement of the therapeutic product. Robotic assistance can potentially enable the surgeon to more precisely position the injection cannula and maintain its position for a prolonged period of time. However, head motion is common among patients undergoing eye surgery, complicating subretinal injections, yet it is often not considered in the evaluation of robotic assistance. No prior study has both included head motion during an evaluation of robotic assistance and demonstrated a significant improvement in the ability to perform subretinal injections compared with the manual approach. In a hybrid ex vivo and in situ study in which an enucleated eye was mounted on a human volunteer, we demonstrate that head-mounting a high-precision teleoperated surgical robot to passively reduce undesirable relative motion between the robot and the eye results in a bleb-formation success rate on moving eyes that is significantly higher than the manual success rates reported in the literature even on stationary enucleated eyes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Addendum to “Optimal Parametric Design of Radial Magnetic Torque Couplers via Dimensional Analysis”

  IEEE Transactions on Magnetics · 2025-11-03

  articleSenior author

  Radial (a.k.a. radial-flux) magnetic torque couplers (MTCs) enable the transfer of torque between an inner rotor (IR) and an outer rotor (OR), each equipped with a set of permanent magnets. In a previous article, we used dimensional analysis to find the minimum set of nondimensional parameters required to characterize an MTC, and then performed a parametric optimization to maximize the synchronous torque (i.e., the torque required to cog the IR with respect to the OR) in a given package size. However, we only explicitly optimized an MTC with 16 IR magnets and 16 OR magnets, which results in 8 stable magnetic equilibria. In this addendum, we applied the same methodology to consider MTCs with 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 stable equilibria. We observe clear trends in the optimal values of the various MTC parameters as we change the number of magnets. We also find that the maximum synchronous torque grows asymptotically with the number of stable equilibria, with a diminishing return beyond 16.

  PublisherDOI

• Revisiting the far-field model of the force and torque induced on a conductive nonmagnetic sphere by a rotating magnetic dipole

  Scientific Reports · 2025-05-25 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Time-varying magnetic fields generate eddy currents in an electrically conductive object, which then interact with the applied magnetic field, inducing force and torque on the object. This phenomenon has been used to perform dexterous noncontact manipulation of conductive nonmagnetic objects using multiple rotating magnetic dipole fields, utilizing an empirical model of the force-torque wrench induced by a rotating magnetic dipole field on a solid conductive sphere (which serves as an approximation for other geometries). In this study, we make two new contributions to the model. First, we gather data of the induced force-torque at a previously unconsidered configuration, which enables a complete characterization of the induced force-torque. Second, we identify a simplified model, valid at low rotation frequencies of the rotating magnetic dipole, that is substantially more intuitive, enabling new insight into how different independent parameters affect the induced force-torque. As with the prior model, our improved models are still far-field models, valid when two conditions are met: the magnetic dipole (which is assumed to be at the center of any physical field source) is at a distance from the surface of the conductive sphere that is at least as large as the sphere's diameter; and when the conductive sphere is outside of the minimum bounding sphere of the physical field source.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Rotational Stiffness Model for Magnetic Microrobots in Soft Tissue

  2025-01-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Head-mounted Surgical Robots for Big-bubble Formation During Deep Anterior Lamellar Keratectomy on a Moving Patient

  2025-01-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Characterization of a Rotating Magnetic Dipole Field for Contactless Detumbling of Space Debris

  2024-06-24 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author

  There is a need for the remediation of space debris, but many objects must be detumbled before they can be safely serviced. In this paper, we describe an empirical study that is the first to evaluate the detumbling performance of a rotating magnetic dipole (MD) field. We develop a new rotatingpermanent-magnet robotic end-effector capable of generating a strong MD field that can be rotated at high speeds. We construct a low-friction experimental apparatus to simulate a tumbling object. We conduct detumbling experiments using a rotating MD field with a variety of angular velocities, as well as the same field held static in two canonical orientations. We provide an estimate of the expected performance of each method in the microgravity environment of space by correcting our data for the friction in our experimental apparatus. We find that a rotating MD field detumbles an object in finite time, whereas a static field only detumbles an object asympotically to zero angular velocity. We find that the rotating MD field substantially outperforms a static MD field in reaching approximately zero angular velocity, provided the angular velocity of the rotating MD exceeds a modest minimum value. Finally, we observe a diminishing return in performance as we continue to increase the angular velocity of the rotating MD field.

  PublisherDOI

• De-orbiting space debris via interaction between a permanent magnet and Earth’s magnetic field: A feasibility study

  Acta Astronautica · 2024-05-22 · 2 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Position Regulation of a Conductive Nonmagnetic Object With Two Stationary Rotating-Magnetic-Dipole Field Sources

  IEEE Transactions on Robotics · 2024-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  Eddy currents induced by rotating magnetic dipole fields can produce forces and torques that enable dexterous manipulation of conductive nonmagnetic objects. This paradigm shows promise for application in the remediation of space debris. The induced force from each rotating-magnetic-dipole field source always includes a repulsive component, suggesting that the object should be surrounded by field sources to some degree to ensure the object does not leave the dexterous workspace during manipulation. In this article, we show that it is possible to fully control the position of an object in a workspace near the midpoint between just two stationary field sources. A given position controller requires a low-level force controller. We propose two new force controllers, and compare them with the state-of-the-art method from the literature. One of the new force controllers is particularly good at not inducing parasitic torques, which is hypothesized to be beneficial for future tasks manipulating and detumbling rotating resident space objects. We perform experimental verification using numerical and physical simulators of microgravity.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• EFRI C3 SoRo: Magneto-electroactive Soft, Continuum, Compliant, Configurable (MESo-C3) Robots for Medical Applications Across Scales

  NSF · $2.0M · 2018–2024

• Collaborative Research: Shepherding Biomedical Microswimmers Using Magnetic Fields

  NSF · $248k · 2014–2019

• CHS: Small: Toward a New Generation of Untethered Magnetic Haptic Interfaces

  NSF · $524k · 2014–2019

• Dexterous Magnetic Manipulation of Non-Magnetic Objects with Stationary Electromagnetic Dipole-Field Sources

  NSF · $570k · 2022–2026

• EAGER: Toward Magnetic Manipulation of Nonmagnetic Objects

  NSF · $257k · 2018–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Bradley J. Nelson

  ETH Zurich

  49 shared

• Christos Bergeles

  20 shared

• Lixin Dong

  Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University

  20 shared

• Arthur W. Mahoney

  University of Pittsburgh

  19 shared

• Bradley E. Kratochvil

  Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

  17 shared

• Kathrin E. Peyer

  University of Manchester

  16 shared

• Li Zhang

  Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation

  16 shared

• Allison M. Okamura

  15 shared

Labs

• M&M RoboticsPI

Awards & honors

• Air Force grant “Mixing Magnetic Methods for Manipulation of…
• Contract from Frontier Innovations: “Magnetic Induction in N…