MEAM Seminar: “Exploring Jet-Propelled Soft Robots: Design, Experiments, and Theory”
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, […]
MEAM Seminar: “Modularity Strategies for Pneumatic Control in Soft Robotic Systems”
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 […]
MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Elastomeric Strain Limitation for Design of Soft Pneumatic Actuators”
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 […]
MEAM Seminar: “SLAM in Hard Places”
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 […]
MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Real-Time Perception and Mixed-Integer Footstep Control for Underactuated Bipedal Walking on Rough Terrain”
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 […]
MEAM Master’s Thesis Defense: “Learning a Vision-Based Footstep Planner for Hierarchical Walking Control on Unstructured Terrain”
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 […]
MEAM Master’s Thesis Defense: “Investigating Jet Interactions in the Multi-Jet SALP Robot”
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 […]
MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Macroscopic Ensemble Methods for Multi Robot Task Assignment in Dynamic Environments”
With finite resources to complete tasks like monitoring, coverage, and search, the challenge lies in identifying and performing tasks that can change both in frequency and location. One potential solution […]
MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Leveraging Impedance-Related Properties for Free Self-Sensing in Actuators for Compact Robots”
Robotic systems, particularly at small scales, require efficient actuation and sensing solutions that maintain compactness. We are interested in systems where sensing and actuation are seamlessly integrated, specifically using impedance-related […]
MEAM Seminar: “Miniaturized Robots and Probes for Precision Health”
Designing miniaturized robots and bioelectronic devices will enable access throughout the entire human body, leading to novel procedures at the cellular level and offering localized diagnosis and treatment with unprecedented […]