NEWS

2024

09/2024: Our lab was awarded an NSF grant, in collaboration with Prof. Cheng at PSU and Prof. Lauder at Harvard, to investigate how to enable modular robotic swimmers that can artificially evolve to generate enhanced mobility in challenging hydrodynamic environments.
08/2024: Bryce successfully defended his M.S. thesis titled “Bistable Prestressed Spring Steel Grippers for Aerial Perching and Grasping.”
07/2024: Zhe’s paper on leveraging tunable bistable modules for reconfigurable robots was selected as a finalist for the best student paper in the 2024 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM).
01/2024: Jiefeng began his position as a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Arizona State University. We wish him the best of luck in his future academic endeavors.

09/2023: We published a paper in Nature Communications to describe an embedded shape morphing method for morphologically adaptive robots. (YouTube, CSU News, Popular Science)
08/2023: Our lab was awarded an NSF grant, in collaboration with Prof. Cheng at PSU, to advance our perching research, focusing on enabling flying robots to perch on dynamic surfaces.
08/2023: We published a paper in IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, exploring the use of tensegrity structures as wheels for a mobile robot capable of actively changing its shape by expanding or collapsing its wheels. (YouTube).
04/2023: Sydney won the top prize, along with a $2K cash award, at CSU Demo Day for his all-terrain robot based on tensegrity structures.
03/2023: Ajai successfully defended his M.S. thesis titled “Modeling, Simulation, and Control of Soft Robots Using Koopman Operator Theory.”

09/2022: We published a paper in Materials Horizons to demonstrate how soft robotic technologies can enable on-demand, remote and lossless manipulation of biofluid droplets, in collaboration with Dr. Kota at NCSU. (CSU News, Popular Science, Science News Explores)
08/2022: We published a paper in IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, demonstrating a reconfigurable robot that can walk, crawl, and grasp using origami-inspired modules (YouTube).
05/2022: Jiefeng successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis titled “Soft and Shape Morphing Robots Driven by Twisted-and-Coiled Actuators.” He will be joining Prof. Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio’s group at Yale University as a postdoctoral researcher.
05/2022: Dr. Zhao began serving as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Robotics, one of the leading journals in robotics.
04/2022: Brandon successfully defended his M.S. thesis titled “The Manufacturing and Soft Robotic Applications of Free Stroke Twisted and Coiled Actuators.” He was also featured as an outstanding graduate by CSU.

12/2021: Our lab was awarded an NSF grant, in collaboration with Prof. Yin at NCSU, to investigate leveraging tunable elastic instabilities to enable multifunctional soft robots.
08/2021: Dr. Zhao began serving as a Technical Editor for IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, one of the leading journals in the field of mechatronics.
08/2021: We published a paper in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, presenting comprehensive physics-based modeling of twisted-and-coiled actuators using the Cosserat rod model.
05/2021: Dr. Zhao was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure, effective July 1st. A heartfelt thanks to all the students, collaborators, and colleagues who contributed to this achievement.

11/2020: Haijie successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation titled “Biologically Inspired Perching for Aerial Robots,” becoming the lab’s first Ph.D. graduate.
11/2020: We publish a paper in IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, showcasing how mechanical intelligence can be leveraged for aerial perching (New Atlas).
09/2020: Our lab was granted a patent on the bistable gripper for aerial grasping and perching.
07/2020: Our lab published a paper in Soft Robotics to demonstrate how twisted-and-coiled actuators can enable soft robots with programmable motions (CSU News)
05/2020: Our lab published a paper in Science Advances to demonstrate how elastic instability can enhance the performance of soft robots (Led by Prof. Yin at NCSU).
03/2020: In collaboration with Opterus R&D, our lab received an STTR grant from DARPA to investigate self-reconfigurable ground robots.

10/2019: Our lab publishes a paper in Science Advances to unravel the coupled mechanical and computational intelligence involved in the upside-down landing of flies (Led by Dr. Cheng at Penn State).
08/2019: Ben Pawlowski successfully defended his Master’s thesis on “Modeling, Simulation, and Control of Soft Robots.”
04/2019: Our group members have received several notable awards:
- Brandon Tighe won 2nd place at the Multicultural Undergraduate Research Art and Leadership Symposium (MURALS) and received the junior researcher award at E-days.
- Jordan Julian earned high honors in the Celebrate Undergraduate Research and Creativity Showcase (CURC) for his research on walking robots.
- The NASA robotic mining team, supervised by Dr. Zhao, was selected as the 1st place mechanical engineering senior design project.
02/2019: Our 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, published in Robotics and Automation Letters, was featured in IEEE spectrum robotics blog.

10/2018: Jiefeng and Ben’s paper on embedded shape morphing using twisted-and-coiled actuators was selected as a finalist for the best student paper in the 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
08/2018: Our lab received an NSF grant to investigate vision-guided perching for small flying robots in collaboration with Dr. Bo Cheng at Penn State.
05/2018: Dr. Zhao received the Research Initiation Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to investigate embedded and continuous shape morphing using twisted-and-coiled actuators.
01/2018: Anthony Demario successfully defended his Master’s thesis on “3D Printable Walking Robot with Soft Joints and Links.”

12/2017: Ali Abbas successfully defended his Master’s thesis on “Modeling of Twisted and Coiled Artificial Muscle for Actuation and Self-Sensing.” He is our lab’s first MS graduate.
08/2015: The Adaptive Robotics Laboratory was established at the Energy Institute, Colorado State University.