Maryland Robotics Center Seminar: Biologically Inspired Soft Mobile Robots

Robotics has the potential to address many of today’s pressing problems in fields ranging from healthcare to manufacturing to disaster relief. However, the traditional approaches used on the factory floor do not perform well in unstructured environments. The key to solving many of these challenges is to explore new, non-traditional designs. Fortunately, nature surrounds us with examples of novel ways to navigate and interact with the real world. Dr. Tolley’s Bioinspired Robotics and Design Lab seeks to borrow the key principles of operation from biological systems and apply them to robotic design. This talk will give an overview of recent projects in the lab that investigate the ways in which the use of non-rigid materials can help solve challenging problems in robotics. These projects seek to develop bioinspired systems capable of navigating the world by walking, digging, and swimming (inspired by animals like turtles, worms, and squid) and of interacting safely with humans and delicate objects. Michael T. Tolley Associate Professor Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Jacobs School of Engineering UC San Diego To ask the speaker a question, click on the speech bubble icon in the lower right hand corner and type in the question in the window that pops up. The question will be sent directly to us. Please note that there is a little bit of a delay when streaming. What participants see is a few minutes behind what is happening at our end. The longer we stream, the greater the delay may become so the questions submitted at the very end may not reach us in time. The best way to get the questions answered is to send them as they come up.