Contact
Prof. Tarek M. Sobh receiving an award at a research event.

Research Interests and Activities

Dr. Sobh’s current research interests include reverse engineering and industrial inspection, CAD/CAM and active sensing under uncertainty, robots and electromechanical systems prototyping, sensor-based distributed control schemes, unifying tolerances across sensing, design, and manufacturing, hybrid and discrete event control, modeling, and applications, and autonomous mobile robotic manipulation. He has published over 275 refereed journal and conference papers, and book chapters in these and other areas, in addition to 27 books. Professor Sobh is also interested in developing theoretical and experimental tools to aid performing adaptive goal-directed robotic sensing for modeling, observing and controlling interactive autonomous agents in unstructured environments.

Dr. Sobh serves or has served on the editorial boards of 18 journals, and has served as Chair, Technical Program Chair and on the program committees of over 300 international conferences and workshops in the Robotics, Automation, Sensing, Computing, Systems, Control, Online Engineering and Engineering Education areas. Dr. Sobh has presented more than 150 keynote speeches, invited talks and lectures, colloquia and seminars at research meetings, University departments, research centers, and companies.

His current research and development activities at include work on tolerance representation and determination for inspection and manufacturing, hybrid controllers for robotics and automation, service robots, prototyping and synthesis of controllers, simulators, and monitors for manipulators, autonomous navigation, evolutionary robotics, algorithms for uncertainty computation from sense data, and web-based prototyping, control synthesis, and simulation of robots.

Prof. Sobh has supervised over 50 award-winning graduate and undergraduate students working on different projects within robotics, prototyping, computer vision, control, and manufacturing; in addition to more than 300 undergraduate and graduate students working on their B.S. projects, Master’s thesis or Ph.D. dissertations. Dr. Sobh is active in consulting and providing service to many industrial organizations and companies. He has consulted for several companies in the U.S., Switzerland, India, Kazakhstan, England, Malaysia and Egypt, to support projects in robotics, automation, manufacturing, sensing, numerical analysis, control, engineering and higher education, and education program accreditation. He has also worked at Philips Laboratories in New York, and a number of companies in Egypt. Dr. Sobh has been awarded over 60 grants to pursue his work in robotics, automation, manufacturing, sensing and STEM Education.

Dr. Sobh is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and a Fellow of the Engineering Society of Detroit. Dr. Sobh is a recipient of the ASEE Northeastern U.S. Distinguished Engineering Professor of the Year award, the IEEE Northeast Technological Innovation Research Award, an ACE Higher Education Award and several other merits in recognition of his educational, research, scholarly and service activities in engineering, education, computing and diversity initiatives.

Dr. Sobh is a Licensed Professional Electrical Engineer (P.E.) in the State of Utah, a Certified Manufacturing Engineer (CMfgE) by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, a Certified Professional Manager (C.M.) by the Institute of Certified Professional Managers at James Madison University, a Certified Reliability Engineer (C.R.E.) by the American Society for Quality, a member of Tau Beta Pi (The Engineering Honor Society), Sigma Xi (The Scientific Research Society), Phi Beta Delta (The International Honor Society), Upsilon Pi Epsilon (The National Honor Society for the Computing Sciences, Phi Kappa Phi (The Academic Honor Society) and an honorary member of Delta Mu Delta (The National Honor Society for Business Administration).

Dr. Sobh is a member, senior member, founding or board member of several professional organizations including; ACM, IEEE, the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), the American Society of Quality (ASQ), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), the International Association of Online Engineering (IAOE), the Discovery Museum, the Connecticut Pre-Engineering Program (CPEP), the Northeast Center for Computers and Information Systems Security (NECCISS), the International E-Learning Association (IELA), and the Society for Industrial Computing. Dr. Sobh is a graduate of Victoria College, Alexandria, Egypt, in 1983 and a life member of the Old Victorians Association. He is also a life Member of the Egyptian Engineering Syndicate, a licensed engineer of the Egyptian Engineers Association and the Alexandria Engineering Organization.

Current Research

  1. On-Line Virtual Real-Time E-Collaboration.
    (journal paper 59 | journal paper 64)
  2. Data Envelopment Analysis Approach for Efficient Engineering Enrollment Management.
    (journal paper 61)
  3. A New Algorithm for Measuring and Optimizing the Manipulability Index.
    (journal paper 65)
  4. Mobile Manipulation Platforms.
    (journal paper 16 | journal paper 21 | journal paper 22 | journal paper 35 | journal paper 46 | journal paper 47 | journal paper 48 | journal paper 49)
  5. A Framework for Extreme Modular Design: A Plug and Play Approach to Sensory Modules, Actuation Platforms, and Task Descriptions and Implementations for Robotics and Automation.
  6. The robotic musicians band project (Partially Artificial Musicians (PAM)) with the School of Arts and Sciences.
    (journal paper 38)
  7. The chiropractic force sensor project (The Glove) and business plan with the School of Chiropractic and the School of Business.
  8. The electronic educational assessment web-based system with the School of Education.
    (journal paper 50)
  9. 3-D Reverse Engineering applications in dentistry, entertainment, plastic surgery and movie making (with the Health Sciences Division, the School of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Business).
  10. Ergonomically-correct task-based design of cockpit interiors based on manipulability measures (Dept. of Industrial design, Dept. of Mathematics, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering).
  11. The Virtual Chemistry Laboratory: An experiment in internet-based education using remotely controlled robot manipulators (Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering and the Department of Chemistry).
  12. A reverse engineering and inspection system (has been implemented in an auto assembling plant).
  13. The robot prototyping environment (currently being packaged as software for controlling, simulating, and monitoring generic manipulators).
    (journal paper 9 | journal paper 15 | journal paper 33 | journal paper 42 | journal paper 45)
  14. An automated stock trading system that is currently in use.
  15. A prototype has been developed for a cell-based car mapping system.
  16. An academic class scheduler and advisor software (SKED), which is currently used by several academic departments.
    (journal paper 41)
  17. A face recognition / object identification software, is currently being developed for commercial deployment via an incubator established through angel investments and VC seed funds (joint work with other Universities and industry partners).
  18. An electronic raffle web site is being readied to go live with the help of VC funding.
  19. Autonomous Tele-robotic System
    ( RISCBOT I | RISCBOT II )
  20. Goal Directed Design of Serial Robotic Manipulators
  21. Heterogeneous Swarm Robots (UB Swarm)
    (Hardware | Software)
  22. 2013 Fall Student Projects
    (Project1 | Project 2 | Project 3 | Project 4)
  23. 3D Face Modeling and Recognition

Past Research Projects

  1. Real-time control, monitoring, and simulation of electro-mechanical systems.
    (journal paper 8 | journal paper 14 | journal paper 22 | journal paper 32)
  2. Parallel architectures for the realization of uncertainty from sensed data.
  3. Inspection and reverse engineering of mechanical parts.
    (journal paper 2 | journal paper 6 | journal paper 7)
  4. Modeling and Verification of Distributed Control Schemes for Mobile Robots.
    (journal paper 13 | journal paper 15 | journal paper 20 | journal paper 30)
  5. Mobile manipulation.
  6. Algorithms for manipulator workspace generation and visualization in the presence of obstacles.
  7. Parallel architectures for robust motion and structure recovery from uncertainty in sensed data.
  8. Advanced sensing for manufacturing.
    (journal paper 12 | journal paper 19 | journal paper 24)
  9. Uncertainty visualization in CAD systems from sensed data.
    (journal paper 7 | journal paper 12 | journal paper 13 | journal paper 20)
  10. Kinematics and dynamic hardware for multi-degree of freedom manipulators.
  11. Hardware realizations for discrete-event-based hybrid systems.
    (journal paper 1 | journal paper 9)
  12. A framework for timed hybrid systems representation, synthesis, and analysis.
    (journal paper 21)
  13. Internet-based tele-control of robotic manipulators.
    (journal paper 25)
  14. Graphical user interfaces for event-based monitoring and control of hybrid systems.
    (journal paper 21)
  15. Coordinate measuring machine operating system realizations using hybrid systems.
  16. Concurrent optimal engineering design of manipulator prototypes.
    (journal paper 14 | journal paper 17 | journal paper 18 | journal paper 32)
  17. Uncertainty visualization for tolerance analysis in manufacturing.
    (journal paper 31)
  18. Catalogue-based optimization of manipulator parameters.
    (journal paper 14)
  19. Parallel realizations for computing 3-D workspaces of redundant manipulators
  20. Object-oriented prototyping environments for electro-mechanical systems and robotic manipulators.
    (journal paper 23)
  21. Robotic Manipulation for Genetics Research.
  22. Feature-based reverse engineering and inspection of machine parts.
    (journal paper 2 | journal paper 5 | journal paper 6 | journal paper 12 | journal paper 19)
  23. Recovering manufacturing tolerancing from uncertainty in sensed data.
    (journal paper 12 | journal paper 19 | journal paper 24 | journal paper 27 | journal paper 31)
  24. Discrete event modeling and control of autonomous agents under uncertainty.
    (journal paper 1 | journal paper 7 | journal paper 9 | journal paper 21)
  25. Discrete-event-based synchronization of multi-media.
  26. The dynamic recursive context of finite state machines.
    (journal paper 2 | journal paper 5 | journal paper 6)
  27. Reverse engineering applications in dentistry.
  28. Service robotics and tire-changing robots for car racing applications.
    (journal paper 16 | journal paper 17 | journal paper 18)
  29. Sensor-based control of mobile robots.
    (journal paper 13 | journal paper 15 | journal paper 20)
  30. Calibration and singularity determination for robotic manipulators.
  31. Optimality for compressed communication modes.
    (journal paper 3)
  32. Error detection and correction for intelligent observers.
    (journal paper 7 | journal paper 24 | journal paper 27)

Academic Conference & Workshop Research Presentations

  • “Are We Accepting the Right Students to Graduate Engineering Programs: Measuring the Success of Accepted Students Via Data Envelopment Analysis”, American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference, Pittsburgh PA, June 2008.
  • “Prototyping, Modeling, Simulation and Analysis in Robotics”, American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Regional Conference, Rhode Island, 2007.
  • “Online Automation and Control: An Experiment in Distance Engineering Education”, the International Remote Engineering, Virtual Instrumentation Symposium (REV 06), Maribor, Slovenia, June, 2006.
  • “An Electronic Web-Based Assessment System”, The Annual New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) Fall Forum, Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts, November, 2004.
  • “Simulation of Memory Management Using Paging Mechanisms in Operating System,” the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) New England Section Spring Conference, Orono, Maine, May 2003.
  • “Case Studies in Web-Controlled Devices and Remote Manipulation: Laboratory-Based Distance Learning”, the 8th International Symposium on Manufacturing with Applications (ISOMA ’02), Florida, May 2002.
  • “Effective Simulation and Control Techniques for Alleviating Problems in Accessing High-Cost Manipulators Wireless Control Perspectives”, the 8th International Symposium on Manufacturing with Applications (ISOMA ’02), Orlando, Florida, May 2002.
  • “Fully Autonomous Web Based Virtual Robot Prototyping and Manufacturing”, the 8th International Symposium on Manufacturing with Applications (ISOMA ’02), Orlando, Florida, May 2002.
  • “Web Based Virtual Robot Prototyping and Manufacturing.” International Conference on Industrial Electronics, Technology and Automation (IETA 2001), Cairo, Egypt, December 2001.
  • “E-Learning: Case Studies in Web-Controlled Devices and Remote Manipulation.'” International Conference on Industrial Electronics, Technology and Automation (IETA 2001), Cairo, Egypt, December 2001.
  • “Ergonomic and Efficient Software Alternatives for High Cost Manipulators – Direct Wireless and Networked Control Techniques.” International Conference on Industrial Electronics, Technology and Automation (IETA 2001), Cairo, Egypt, December 2001.
  • “SKED: A Course Scheduling and Advising Software.” 2001 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico, June 2001.
  • “Distance Learning: Case Studies in Web-based Robotics, Automation and Prototyping,” AMSE Conference on Science, Technology and Entrepreneurship, Washington, D.C., October 2000.
  • “A Tool for Manipulator Design, Optimization, Simulation and Control,” 8th International Symposium on Robotics and Applications (ISORA 2000), Hawaii, May 2000.
  • “Robotic Optimization for the Formula One Tire Changing Robot (F1-T.C.R.),” 8th International Symposium on Robotics and Applications (ISORA 2000), Hawaii, May 2000.
  • “A Case Study in Manipulator Optimization: The F-1-T.C.R.” AMSE Conference on Science, Technology and Entrepreneurship, Washington, D.C., October 1999.
  • “Remote Learning: A World-Wide-Web Operated Robot Arm.” IEEE 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechatronics, Istanbul, Turkey, May 1999.
  • “A Generic Simulator/Controller for Robot Manipulators.” IEEE 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechatronics, Istanbul, Turkey, May 1999.
  • “The Formula One Tire Changing Robot (F1-T.C.R.).” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (IEEE ICRA 99), May 1999, Detroit, Michigan.
  • “A PC-Based Simulator/Controller/Monitor Software for Manipulators and Electromechanical Systems.” Seventh International Symposium on Robotics with Applications (ISORA ’98), Alaska, May 1998.
  • “Automated Tolerance Specification Across Sensing, Design and Manufacturing.” Sixth International Symposium on Manufacturing with Applications (ISOMA ’98), Alaska, May 1998.
  • “Discrete Event and Hybrid Systems Applications,” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 1997.
  • “Recovering Structure Uncertainties from Noisy Sense Data,” 1997 Measurement Science Conference, Pasadena, California, January 1997.
  • “Commanding Sensors and Controlling Indoor Autonomous Mobile Robots,” Presented in the IEEE International Conference on Control Applications, Dearborn, Michigan, September 1996.
  • “Sensing Under Uncertainty for Mobile Robots,” Presented in the Second World Automation Congress, First International Symposium on Intelligent Automation and Control (ISIAC 96), Montpellier, France, May 1996.
  • “Prototyping a Three-link Robot Manipulator,” Presented in the Second World Automation Congress, Sixth International Symposium on Robotics and Manufacturing (ISRAM 96), Montpellier, France, May 1996.
  • “Modeling and Recovering Uncertainties in Sense Date.” Sixth International Symposium on Measurement and Control in Robotics (ISMCR 96), Brussels, Belgium, May 1996.
  • “A Unifying Framework for Tolerance Analysis in Sensing, Design, and Manufacturing.” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Nagoya, Japan, May 1995.
  • “Discrete Event Control for Inspection and Reverse Engineering.” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, San Diego, May 1994.
  • “Prototyping Activities in Robotics, Control, and Manufacturing,” Department of Defense Software Technology Support Center (DoD STSC) Annual Symposium, Salt Lake City, April 1994.
  • “Industrial Inspection and Reverse Engineering.” 1994 2nd CAD-Based Vision Workshop, Pittsburgh, February 1994.
  • “A Discrete Event Framework for Intelligent Inspection,” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Atlanta, Georgia, May 1993.
  • “Autonomous Observation Under Uncertainty,” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Nice, France, May 1992.
  • “A Model for Visual Observation Under Uncertainty,” IEEE Symposium on Computer Aided Control System Design (CACSD ’92), March 1992.
  • “A Model for Shape and Motion Perception,” SPIE Conference on Mobile Robots, November 91.
  • “Visual Observation of A Moving Agent,” The European Robotics and Intelligent Systems Conference (EURISCON ’91), Corfu, Greece, June 1991.
  • “A Hybrid System for Computing Reachable Workspaces for Redundant Manipulators,” SPIE Conference on Machine Vision Systems Integration, November 1990.
  • “Operator/System Communications: An Optimizing Decision Tool,” SPIE Conference on Mobile Robots, November 1990.
  • “Structure and Motion of Entire Polyhedra,” SPIE Conference on Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision, November 1990.
  • “An Efficient System for 3-D Object Recognition.” SPIE Conference on Three Dimensional Perception and Recognition, November 1990.
  • Structure and Motion in the “Moving Blocks World.” IASTED International Conference on Adaptive Control and Signal Processing, October 1990.
  • “A System for Recovering 3-D Motion and Structure.” ACM 3rd International Conference on Industrial and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, July 1990.
  • “Recovery of 3-D Motion and Structure by Temporal Fusion.” SPIE conference on Sensor Fusion, November 1989.
  • “Pyramid Computation of the Image Flow for Fast Tracking,” SPIE conference on Sensor Fusion, November 1989.

Patents & Inventions

  • Tarek M. Sobh, “Networked Drone System and Method”, Provisional Patent — US 63/594, 513, October 31, 2023.
  • Tarek Sobh, Sarosh Patel and Pritesh Bhavsar Chandra Sekhar, “Cloud Integrable Intelligent Photo Frame”, Provisional Patent – US 62/767, 140, November 2018.
  • Tarek Sobh and Ausif Mahmood, “Multi-algorithm-based face recognition system and method with optimal dataset partitioning for a cloud environment”, PCT/US2015/040652, Jan 21, 2016.
  • Sobh; Tarek M., Alameldin; Tarek Khaled, Alameldin; Naglaa K., Mihali; Raul Constantin, and Rosca; Andrei. “Normalized distributed exchange system”, 11/778,606, December 13, 2011.
  • Raul Mihali, Tarek M Sobh, “Raffle-based collaborative product selling and buying system”, WO2004107237 A1, Dec 9, 2004.
  • George Estrada, Tarek Sobh, Ahmed El-Sayed, “Emergency System for Taxi and Car Transportation Services”, Provisional Patent, March 2018.
  • T.Sobh and Andrew Rosca, “Method and System for Online Gaming”, Patent Pending.
  • Tarek M. Sobh, Hisham S. Elkadi, Sarosh H. Patel, “Vibration Weight Loss Seating for Vehicle Use”, Patent Pending.
  • T. Sobh, “Multilingual Speech Synthesis.” Invention Disclosure, June 1994.
  • G. Gopalakrishnan and T. Sobh, “Monitoring Spaces within a Parking Lot,” Invention Disclosure submitted to the University of Utah Campus Office for Inventions and Patents, June 1993.
  • T. Sobh, “An autonomous sprinkler,” Invention Disclosure submitted to the University of Utah Campus Office for Inventions and Patents, November 1993.
  • T. Sobh and G. Gopalakrishnan, “Sprinkler system with rain, wind, and sun detector,” Invention Disclosure submitted to the University of Utah Campus Office for Inventions and Patents, November 1993.
  • G. Gopalakrishnan and T. Sobh, “Child crib computer,” Invention Disclosure submitted to the University of Utah Campus Office for Inventions and Patents, November 1993.
  • G. Gopalakrishnan and T. Sobh, “Device to fix images obtained while copying fat bound volumes,” Invention Disclosure submitted to the University of Utah Campus Office for Inventions and Patents, November 1993.
  • G. Gopalakrishnan and T. Sobh, “Gas-tank level indicator based on resonant acoustic tube,” Invention Disclosure submitted to the University of Utah Campus Office for Inventions and Patents, November 1993.
  • G. Gopalakrishnan and T. Sobh, “Range detector to help avoid collisions between automobiles and while parking,” Invention Disclosure submitted to the University of Utah Campus Office for Inventions and Patents, November 1993.
  • T. Sobh and G. Gopalakrishnan, “Child crib computer with video monitoring unit,” Invention Disclosure submitted to the University of Utah Campus Office for Inventions and Patents, November 1993.