Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering

Education

Research Interests

Dr. Davidson’s research interests lie at the intersection of design, mechanics, and controls. His team designs and builds novel mechanisms and systems for applications involving physical interaction in unstructured environments. Examples of previous projects include developing an apple picking robot and prototyping a smart fluid actuator for human rehabilitation.

Biography 

Dr. Davidson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering at Oregon State University. He received his B.S. from the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY in 2004. After serving in the Army for five years, Dr. Davidson worked as a project manager for the CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company at Hanford, WA from 2009 to 2012. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. from Washington State University and was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2016 to 2018. 

Selected Publications

Davidson, J.R. and Krebs, H.I., “An Electrorheological Fluid Actuator for Rehabilitation Robotics,” IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, Vol. 23(5): 2156 - 2167, 2018.

Alencastre-Miranda, M., Davidson, J.R., Johnson, R.M., Waguespack, H., and Krebs, H.I., “Robotics for Sugarcane Cultivation: Analysis of Billet Quality using Computer Vision,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol. 3(4): 3828-3835, 2018.

Silwal, A., Davidson, J.R., Karkee, M., Mo, C., Zhang, Q., and Lewis, K., “Design, Integration, and Field Evaluation of a Robotic Apple Harvester,” Journal of Field Robotics, Vol. 34(6): 1140-1159, 2017.