MEAM Master’s Thesis Defense: “Investigating Jet Interactions in the Multi-Jet SALP Robot”

David Rittenhouse Laboratory Building, Room 4E19 209 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Jet propulsion is a common locomotion strategy in nature. We developed an underwater particle image velocimetry (PIV) system to investigate the hydrodynamic effects of the SALP (Salp-inspired Approach to Low-energy Propulsion) robot, a soft underwater robot that swims using jet propulsion. Multiple SALP units can be physically connected to form a multi-SALP system, coordinating their […]

MEAM Master’s Thesis Defense: “Learning a Vision-Based Footstep Planner for Hierarchical Walking Control on Unstructured Terrain”

David Rittenhouse Laboratory Building, Room 4C4 209 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Bipedal robots demonstrate high potential in navigating challenging terrains through dynamic ground contact. However, current frameworks often depend solely on proprioception or use manually designed visual processing pipelines, which are fragile in real-world settings and complicate real-time footstep planning in unstructured environments. To overcome this problem, this work proposes a vision-based hierarchical control framework that […]

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Real-Time Perception and Mixed-Integer Footstep Control for Underactuated Bipedal Walking on Rough Terrain”

Towne 319 220 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, United States

The promise of bipedal robots is to go where people go, serving as surrogates for human labor in dangerous, unstructured environments. For the most part, this promise remains unrealized. The primary challenge for controlling bipedal locomotion is underactuation. Standing on a single leg limits control authority, requiring appropriate foot placement to generate or absorb momentum […]

MEAM Seminar: “SLAM in Hard Places”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping is a fundamental problem for robots interacting with a novel environment and has been a densely studied area of research for several decades. The modern paradigm of feature extraction and matching coupled with advancements in sensor technology have allowed robots to achieve sub meter localization accuracy over kilometer long trajectories in […]

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Elastomeric Strain Limitation for Design of Soft Pneumatic Actuators”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Modern robots embody power and precision control, yet as robots undertake tasks that apply forces on humans this power brings risk of injury. Soft robotic actuators use deformation to produce smooth, continuous motions and conform to delicate objects while imparting forces capable of safely pushing humans. This thesis presents strategies for the design, modeling, and […]

MEAM Seminar: “Modularity Strategies for Pneumatic Control in Soft Robotic Systems”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Soft robotic systems, defined as both compliant robotic platforms and mechanically adaptive structures, offer unique advantages such as safe human-machine interaction, structural flexibility, and environment-driven reconfigurability. By relying on deformable materials and embedded physical intelligence, these systems can achieve complex motions and responsive behaviors that are difficult for conventional rigid robots. Pneumatic control, including actuation, […]

MEAM Ph.D. Thesis: “Geometric Methods for Efficient and Explainable Control of Underactuated Robotic Systems”

Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Robots are complex, high-dimensional systems, governed by nonlinear, underactuated dynamics and evolving on non-Euclidean manifolds, posing numerous challenges for control synthesis and analysis. While optimization-based methods of control can flexibly accommodate diverse dynamics, costs, and constraints, they often demand coarse approximations or powerful onboard processors (infeasible for many aerial and space systems) due to their […]

MEAM Seminar: “Exploring Jet-Propelled Soft Robots: Design, Experiments, and Theory”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Understanding how marine animals migrate is critical for assessing the impacts of climate change on ocean ecosystems—and yet current Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), with their noisy propellers and rigid hulls, are ill-suited to operate alongside sensitive species. Bio-inspired robots offer a promising alternative by emulating the natural locomotion strategies of fish, cephalopods, and other marine […]

MEAM Seminar: “Leveraging Robot-Based Haptic Dyads to Improve Community-Based Stroke Rehabilitation”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Disabilities related to aging and stroke impact functional independence and quality of life for millions of older adults, creating a growing need for scalable, accessible rehabilitation solutions. Community-based robotic therapy that leverages social interaction and haptic feedback offers a promising approach, particularly for individuals with motor and cognitive impairments. This seminar presents work exploring how […]

MEAM Seminar: “Predicting Infant Center of Pressure through Physics and Data Driven Modeling”

Room 337, Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Affecting roughly 2 in 1000 infants in the USA, Cerebral Palsy (CP) is the most common cause of motor impairment in children. CP has no cure, but motor therapy is an effective tool for providing rehabilitation. Although therapy is most effective before the age of 2, early CP detection is difficult and labor-intensive, making the […]