1. Surgical Robotics

2. Minimally Invasive Surgery and Surgical Devices

3. Mechanism Design

4. Product Design

1. Design of Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgical Tools

2. Design of Surgical Devices

3. Soft Robotics

4. Application of Compliant Mechanisms to Surgical Tools

1. Finalist (Team MAGNEX) at Soft material robot challenge, organized by IEEE International conference on robotics and automation (ICRA) held at Singapore, May 2017

2. Innovative Student Project Award for design of a novel Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) from Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), Delhi, India, 2008

Research

1. Senior Research Fellow, Robotics Lab, IIT Madras - Jul 2014 to Dec 2015

2. Junior Research Fellow, Robotics Lab, IIT Madras - Jun 2012 to Jul 2014

Industry

1. Research Engineer, Rotary Screw Compressor Division, ELGI Equipments Limited - 2008 to 2011

1. Karthik Chandrasekaran, Parameswaran, S., Annamraju, S., Chandra, S., Manickam, R., & Thondiyath, A., 2021, “A Practical Approach to the Design and Development of Tele-Operated Surgical Robots for Resource Constrained Environments—A Case Study,” ASME Journal of Medical Devices, 15(1), pp. 011105. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4049393

2. Karthik Chandrasekaran, Somayaji, A., and Thondiyath, A., 2021, "A Novel Design for a Compliant Mechanism Based Variable Stiffness Grasper Through Structure Modulation." ASME Journal of Medical Devices, 15(1), pp. 014501. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4049309

3. Srikar, A., Kumar, P. V., Karthik Chandrasekaran, & Asokan, T., 2021, “Passivity based Gain Independent Control for Transparent Sensing of Remote Environment,” IEEE Sensors Journal, 21(5), pp. 6942 – 6951. DOI: 10.1109/JSEN.2020.3038636

4. Karthik Chandrasekaran, Asokan Thondiyath, 2020, “Design of a Tether Driven Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgical Tool With Decoupled Degree-of-Freedom Wrist,” The International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery, Wiley, 16(3), pp.e2084, DOI: 10.1002/rcs.2084

5. Karthik Chandrasekaran, Asokan Thondiyath, 2017, “Design of a 2 Degree of Freedom compliant tooltip for a handheld powered surgical tool,” Vol.11, Issue.1, ASME Journal of Medical Devices, 11(1), pp. 014502, DOI: 10.1115/1.4034879

1. Vijay K., Karthik C., Srikar A., Asokan T., ‘A novel three degrees of freedom haptic device for rendering texture, stiffness, shape, and shear’, 6th IFToMM International Symposium on Robotics and Mechatronics (ISRM), Taipei, Taiwan, October 2019

2. Nagamanikandan Govindan, Sai Sourya varenya Kovvali, Karthik Chandrasekaran, Asokan Thondiyath, ‘GraspMan – A Novel Robotic Platform with Grasping, Manipulation, and Multimodal Locomotion Capability’, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Brisbane, Australia, May 2018

3. Karthik Chandrasekaran, Adarsh Somayaji, Asokan Thondiyath, ‘Realisation of a Statically Balanced Compliant Planar Remote Center of Motion Mechanism for Robotic Surgery’, Design of Medical Devices (DMD) Conference, Minnesota, USA, April 2018

4. Karthik Chandrasekaran, Akhil Sathuluri, Asokan Thondiyath, “MagNex- Expendable robotic surgical tooltip”, in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Singapore, May 2017

5. Karthik Chandrasekaran, Sakthivel Sivaraman, Asokan Thondiyath, “Static Balancing and Inertia Compensation of a Master Manipulator for Tele-operated Surgical Robot Application”, International Conference on Advances in Robotics (AIR), Goa, India, July 2015

6. Suraj Parameswaran, Karthik Chandrasekaran, Sourav Chandra, Asokan Thondiyath, ‘Optimisation of an Active Remote Centre of Motion Mechanism for Minimal Extracorporeal Workspace for Robotic Surgery’, International Conference on Advances in robotics (AIR), Pune, India, July 2013

1. Vijay Kumar, Karthik C., Srikar Annamraju, Asokan T. 2020, A multimodal 3-Degree of Freedom haptic device, (International patent, Application No.: 201941043480)- Filed

2. Adarsh Somayaji, Karthik C., Asokan T. 2020, A compliant mechanism based variable stiffness robotic grasper?, (Application No.: 202041027961) - Filed

3. Karthik C., Theodosia L., Asokan T. 2019, A compact modular active hand rehabilitation device, (Application No.: 201941003094) - Published

4. Nagamanikandan G., Karthik C., Sourya Varenya K., Asokan T. 2018, A versatile hybrid robotic system for multimodal locomotion and grasping, (Application No.: 201841008257) - Published

5. Karthik C., Suraj P., Sourav C., Asokan T. 2017, A master-slave tele-operated surgical robotic system for robotic surgery training, (Application No.: 201741041857) - Published

6. Karthik C., Asokan T. 2017, A magnetically coupled disposable compliant tooltip for robotic surgery, (Application No.: 201741001039) - Published

7. Karthik C., Asokan T. 2015, Design of a 6 DOF Master Manipulator arm with enhanced gravity compensation and compliant grasping for robotic surgery, (Application No.: 6200/CHE/2015) - First examination report completed

8. Karthik C., Asokan T. 2014, A minimally invasive surgical tool for robotic surgery with disengaged degrees of freedom (Application No.:5620/CHE/2014) - First examination report completed