NEWS
2021
- 12/2021: Our lab is awarded a new NSF grant in collaboration with Prof. Jie Yin from NCSU to investigate how to leverage tunable elastic instabilities to enable multifunctional soft robots.
- 08/2021: Dr. Zhao starts to serve as a Technical Editor for IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics
- 08/2021: We publish a paper on the physics-based modeling of twisted-and-coiled actuators in IEEE transactions on Robotics
- 05/2021: Dr. Zhao is promoted to Associate Professor with tenure, effective July 1st.
2020
11/2020: Haijie defends his PhD research titled “Biologically Inspired Perching for Aerial Robots”.
11/2020: We publish a paper in IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics to leverage mechanical intelligence for aerial perching (New Atlas).
09/2020: Lab is granted a patent on the bistable gripper for aerial grasping and perching.
07/2020: Lab publishes a paper in Soft Robotics to demonstrate how twisted-and-coiled actuators can enable soft robots with programmable motions (CSU News)
05/2020: Lab publishes a paper in Science Advances to demonstrate how elastic instability can enhance the performance of soft robots (Lead by Prof. Yin at NCSU).
03/2020: Together with Opterus R&D, lab receives a STTR grant from DARPA to investigate self-reconfigurable ground robots.
2019
10/2019: Lab publishes a paper in Science Advances to unravel the coupled mechanical and computational intelligence in the upside-down landing of flies (Lead by Dr. Cheng at Penn State).
08/2019: Ben Pawlowski defended his master thesis on “Modeling, Simulation, and Control of Soft Robots”.
04/2019: Our group members win several awards:
Brandon Tighe wins 2nd place at the Multicultural Undergraduate Research Art and Leadership Symposium (MURALS) as well as the junior researcher award on E-days.
Jordan Julian receives high honors in Celebrate Undergraduate Research and Creativity Showcase (CURC) for his research on walking robots.
The NASA robotic mining team supervised by Dr. Zhao selected as the 1st place mechanical engineering senior design project.
02/2019: Lab participates in the annual open house hosted by the Little Shop of Physics (LSOP) as a science partner, showcasing our robots to more than 8,000 visitors.
02/2019: Our recent research on reconfigurable robots is described in IEEE spectrum robotics blog.
2018
10/2018: Jiefeng and Ben’s paper on embedded shape morphing using twisted-and-coiled actuators is selected as a finalist for the best student paper in the 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
08/2018: We receive an NSF grant to investigate vision guided perching for small flying robots, collaborating with Dr. Bo Cheng at Penn State.
05/2018: Dr. Zhao receives the Research Initiation Award from National Science Foundation (NSF) to investigate embedded and continuous shape morphing using twisted-and-coiled actuators.
01/2018: Anthony Demario defended his master thesis on “3D Printable Walking Robot with Soft Joints and Links”.
2017 and Before
12/2017: Ali Abbas defended his master thesis on “Modeling of Twisted and Coiled Artificial Muscle for Actuation and Self-Sensing”.
08/2015: Established the Adaptive Robotics Laboratory at the Energy Institute of Colorado State University.