Grainger College of Engineering, All Events

Abstract 

For decades, we have strived to replicate biology. Now, it is time to move from studying biological locomotion to extending it—building machines that evolve their own ways of moving through the world. These robots should not merely navigate their environments but should rapidly and dexterously reshape themselves the moment they sense that their environment is not traversable. They should quickly morph into new forms and devise new means of movement to make traversal of any obstacles possible, conforming to the constraints imposed by their surroundings. These machines will unify hardware plasticity with software plasticity—embodying new paradigms of resilient dynamic locomotion. 

Over the past decade, I have devoted my research to the design and control of morphing robots inspired by bats. The research evolved to the vision of creating “unstoppable” dynamic morphing robots that can navigate in environments where standard systems face the risk of complete immobilization. In my talk, I will discuss how my team has advanced toward realizing this vision. I will present three research areas in my group, our hardware designs, underlying locomotion models, and control strategies, along with video demonstrations from experiments. My talk will also highlight the key challenges, the biological inspirations that shape my designs, and the applications of these systems in areas spanning remote sensing in confined spaces to planetary exploration.

 About the Speaker 

Alireza Ramezani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University (NU). He earned his Ph.D. (`14) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, specializing in robotic locomotion under the mentorship of Professor Jessy Grizzle. He received his M.Sc. (`10) in Mechanical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and his B.Sc. (`07) from the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran. For his designs in robot locomotion, Alireza’s contributions have earned him esteemed accolades, including NSF CAREER Award, ASME Rising Star Award, NASA JPL SFRP, and the NU Impact Award. In a leadership capacity, he led NU teams in NASA’s Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-Changing (BIG) Idea Challenge organized by the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) in 2020 and 2022. In 2022, NU team received NASA’s top honor—the ARTEMIS Award—at the BIG Idea Challenge competition in California forum. He has secured over $8 million in competitive research funding from agencies such as NSF, NASA, and ARL during his tenure at NU. 

His work has garnered significant recognition, with his robotic designs featured prominently in leading scientific journals, including two cover articles in Science Robotics Magazine and a research article in Nature Communications. His works have also attracted extensive global media attention, covered by more than 200 news outlets since 2018, including IEEE Spectrum, Space Magazine, The Independent, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, National Geographic, CNN, NBC, and Euronews.

Host: Professor Prashant Mehta