David W. Weir

I am currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University. I began graduate school in the fall of 2001 and am a member of the Laboratory for Intelligent Mechanical Systems (LIMS) research group. I was awarded an NSF IGERT fellowship from 2001 through 2005 coordinated through the Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics department: Northwestern IGERT

A native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, I received my B.S. with Honors in Physics from Bates College in Maine in 1999, and my Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University in 2003. During the summers of 1997 and 1998, I completed internships at Bates College and Sandia National Laboratories doing physics research. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Bates in 1999, I worked at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC for two years as a research scientist in physics, chemistry, and materials science groups.

From December 2004 to June 2005, I was working as a mechanical engineer at Immersion Corporation in San Jose, California for my NSF IGERT Graduate Internship. I worked on a complete start-to-finish client project developing a haptic force feedback simulator used for rapid and efficient product development and prototyping. It was a great opportunity, as I helped determine the performance specifications, designed the mechanical system in CAD (SolidWorks), performed the mechanical force analysis (COSMOS), designed the electrical sensing and control system, selected the actuators and other mechanical components, and produced engineering drawings for the machine shop. Once the parts were fabricated, I assembled the mechanical and electrical components, and wrote the control software using the xPC real-time add-on to Matlab. By the end of my internship, the system was completed, delivered, and worked as desired.

I am currently researching the use of damping to improve the Z-width of high performance haptic displays for rendering tactile information. I also developed a novel characterization system to measure haptic display rendering behavior and determine Z-width. Please follow the link to my research page for more information. For my masters research at Northwestern, I developed a measurement system to characterize the tactile experience of actuating switches and buttons.


Link to my resume


For more information, please see my research pages here:

David Weir's PhD Research Page

David Weir's Masters Research Page

Phone: (650) 488-4525
Office: Tech B230 (LIMS)

 


Last updated by DW on 03/17/08.