The Speakers

Abstract

Biography
Kevin Chen is currently the D. Reid Weedon, Jr. ’41 Career Development Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, USA. He received his PhD in Engineering Sciences at Harvard University in 2017 and his bachelor’s degree in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University in 2012. His research interests include developing high bandwidth and robust soft actuators for microrobot manipulation and locomotion. He has published in top journals including Nature, Science Robotics, PNAS, Nature Communications, IEEE TR-O, and Journal of Fluid Mechanics. He is a recipient of the RAL 2020 best paper award, the IROS 2015 best student paper award, and a Harvard Teaching Excellence Award.

Abstract

We propose a sheet-shaped wireless soft millirobot, called warmmate, inspired by soft-bodied animals in nature, including warms, caterpillars, jellyfishes, spermatozoids, water beetles, and body-undulating fishes. Warmmate can have over eight locomotion modes at the same time to navigate in complex confined regions of the human body. It can adapt its body morphology and locomotion mode to different confined spaces, such as different size of blood vessels, ear and other tubular channel gaps, brain ventricles and aqueduct, and abdominal gaps. Such adaptation and multimodal locomotion capability comes from its soft-bodied dynamic shape-programming and external magnetic control, where tiny magnets are programmed to have varying orientations in a sinusoidal wave form. Such wireless soft millirobots would be used in biomedical applications inside the human body under ultrasound medical imaging guidance.

Biography
Metin Sitti has pioneered many research areas, including wireless miniature medical robots, gecko-inspired microfiber adhesives, bioinspired miniature robots, and physical intelligence. He is a director at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany. He is also a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Koç University in Turkey. He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University (2002-2014) and a research scientist at UC Berkeley (1999-2002) in USA. He is the founder of the start-up nanoGriptech, Inc., and is the recipient of the Breakthrough of the Year Award, ERC Advanced Grant, RSS Best Paper Award, Rahmi Koç Science Prize, SPIE Nanoengineering Pioneer Award, and NSF CAREER Award.

Abstract

Biography
Rob Shepherd is an associate professor at Cornell University in the Sibley School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. He received his B.S. (Material Science & Engineering), Ph.D. (Material Science & Engineering), and M.B.A. from the University of Illinois in Material Science & Engineering. At Cornell, he runs the Organic Robotics Lab (ORL: http://orl.mae.cornell.edu), which focuses on using methods of invention, including bioinspired design approaches, in combination with material science to improve machine function and autonomy. We rely on new and old synthetic approaches for soft material composites that create new design opportunities in the field of robotics. Our research spans three primary areas: bioinspired robotics, advanced manufacturing, and human-robot interactions. He is the recipient of an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, and his lab’s work has been featured in popular media outlets such as the BBC, Discovery Channel, and PBS’s NOVA documentary series.

Abstract

The deep sea remains the largest unknown territory on Earth because it is so difficult to explore. This talk mainly discuss a recent work published as Nature cover paper. Inspired by the structure of a deep-sea snailfsh, we develop an untethered soft robot for deep-sea exploration, with onboard power, control and actuation protected from pressure by integrating electronics in a soft matrix. This self-powered robot eliminates the requirement for any rigid vessel, and actuates with dielectric elastomer successfully in a feld test in the Mariana Trench down to a depth of 10,900 metres and to swim freely in the South China Sea at a depth of 3,224 metres. Our work highlights the potential of designing soft, lightweight devices for use in extreme conditions.

Biography

Tiefeng Li, Professor in X mechanics center, Zhejiang University. He has published over 50 SCI papers (3 ESI highly cited papers), including 1 Nature cover paper and 1 Science Advances paper, and received the NSFC Distinguished Young Scientists Fund, the first Xplorer Prize (Frontier and interdisciplinary research), and MIT TR35 China.

Abstract

Animals such as mice, cockroaches and spiders have the remarkable ability to maneuver through challenging cluttered natural terrain and have been inspiration for adaptable legged robotic systems. Recent biological research further indicates that body reorientation along pathways of minimal energy is a key factor influencing such locomotion. We propose to extend this idea by hypothesizing that body compliance of soft bodied animals and robots might be an alternate yet effective locomotion strategy to squeeze through cluttered obstacles. We present some early results related to the above using Compliant Legged Autonomous Robotic Insect (CLARI), our novel, insect-scale, origami-based quadrupedal robot. While the distributed compliance of such soft-legged robots enables them to explore complex environments, their gait design, control, and motion planning is often challenging due to a large number of unactuated/underactuated degrees of freedom. Towards address this issue, we present a geometric motion planning framework for autonomous, closed kinematic chain articulated systems that is computationally effective and has a promising potential for onboard and real-time gait generation.

Biography