Robotics Seminar: We are excited to host our own Siyi Xu, new assistant professor in MechSE, for this week's Robotics Seminar! Join us this Friday, November 22, in person in CSL Studio 1232 at 1 pm CT to learn about soft and wearable robots! We'll have some snacks!
You can also join via Zoom:
https://illinois.zoom.us/j/84149708803?pwd=R3JqMnk3VU0wWUZRbGtMd3o1YjZwdz09&from=addon
Meeting ID: 841 4970 8803
Password: 444347
Please see their abstract and biography below:
Title: Electrical actuation and control of soft fluidic robots: towards wearable and implantable soft robotic systems for daily purposes
Abstract: Soft robots made of compliant materials are adaptive to environment, robust to impact, and lightweight, making them safe for human-centered applications. Fluidic robots, as one of the most commonly used soft robots, have been widely applied in wearable technologies, including assistive devices, therapeutic tools, and human-machine interfaces. However, the power and control systems for fluidic robots generally are not only rigid, but also ten times heavier than the actuators, significantly limiting the robots’ mobility, flexibility, and safety to human. In this talk, I will introduce compliant, lightweight, and compact transducing systems that have enabled actuation and control of fluidic actuators. I will start by introducing a power-dense electrically-responsive soft actuator that is centimeter scale in size and weighs only 0.1g. Then I will present centi-meter scale soft valves and peristaltic pumps that employ these soft actuators as the core components. I will discuss the working mechanism and design criteria of these valves and pumps, and demonstrate their capabilities to generate and control fluidic flows. Lastly, I will demonstrate closed-loop control of a bending hydraulic actuator with the aforementioned soft valves and pumps. These soft actuators and transducing systems will serve as the foundation for my future work on untethered soft robotic systems for everyday applications, paving the way for advancements in wearable and implantable technologies.
Bio: Siyi Xu is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the director of the WISER Laboratory (Wearable and Implantable Soft Electronics and Robotics Lab). Prior to joining UIUC, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics at Northwestern University, where she worked on implantable sensors for cardiac output flow and drug delivery monitoring for chemotherapy patients. She received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Harvard University in 2022. Her research focuses on developing soft robotic platforms equipped with compliant, lightweight, and compact sensing and transducing systems for human-centered applications. Siyi received her bachelor’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was selected as a Rising Star in Mechanical Engineering in 2021. She is also a co-recipient of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award.