Fall 2024 GRASP on Robotics: Robert Katzschmann, ETH Zürich, “Can robots based on musculoskeletal designs better interact with the world?”
November 22 @ 10:30 am - 11:45 am
This will be a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Wu and Chen and virtual attendance on Zoom.
ABSTRACT
Living materials represent a new frontier in engineering materials for robotic systems, incorporating biological living cells and synthetic materials into their design. These bio-hybrid robots are dynamic and intelligent, potentially harnessing living matter’s capabilities, such as growth, regeneration, morphing, biodegradation, and environmental adaptation. Such attributes position bio-hybrid devices as a transformative force in robotics development, promising enhanced dexterity, adaptive behaviors, sustainable production, robust performance, and environmental stewardship. Nature’s musculoskeletal design can act as an inspiration for artificial and living robots. We will touch on the transformative potential of living systems in crafting sophisticated, intelligent machines and delve into our recent advances in culturing biohybrid actuators and engineering bio-interfaces to produce contracting muscles and biohybrid robots.
Presenter
Robert Katzschmann - Learn More
Robert Katzschmann is an Assistant Professor (tenure track) of Robotics at ETH Zurich, where he leads the Soft Robotics Lab, part of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems. Before joining ETH, he was CTO at Dexai Robotics and Senior Applied Scientist with Amazon Robotics in the USA. Robert received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT (2018) and his Diplom-Ingenieur in Mechanical Engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany (2013). His research in soft robotics received best paper awards at premier conferences and journals and has been featured in the New York Times. Robert also serves as an editor for IJRR, ICRA, IROS, RoboSoft, npj Robotics, and RSS.