Congratulation Robert Baines
Dr. Robert Baines has been awarded the Branco Weiss Fellowship
Robert Baines – Developing shape-morphing mobile robots
Transforming robots are no longer fantastic speculations in comic books. Dr. Robert Baines recently demonstrated how mobile robots can “evolve on demand”, morphing shape and adjusting movement based on environmental context to reap locomotion efficiency gains. Mutable morphology could expand robots’ capabilities far beyond just locomotion. Industrial mobile robots, presently confined to inspection tasks, could be built with shape-morphing components to enable adaptation for new functions such as object manipulation, complex infrastructure traversal, and even collaboration with humans. Replacing fixed metal legs of quadruped mobile robots with shape-morphing materials, Dr. Baines will investigate how robot form, control scheme, and physical environment are intertwined. Shape-morphing mobile robots could one day assume industrial tasks dangerous for humans.