Small-scale untethered mobile robots have the unique capability of accessing to small spaces and scales directly. Due to their small size and small-scale physics and dynamics, they could be agile and portable, and could be inexpensive and in large numbers if they are mass-produced. They would have high impact applications in health-care, bioengineering, environment monitoring, and inspection. In this talk, design, fabrication, and control of different size-scale miniature mobile robots leveraging advanced and soft materials are presented. First, as millimeter scale mobile robots, novel climbing, flying, jumping-gliding, and water-running robots inspired by insects, bats, and lizards are presented. Novel gecko-inspired micro-fiber adhesives using intermolecular forces such as van der Walls forces are shown to enable many new miniature robot and robotic manipulation applications. Pill-size untethered soft capsule robots are proposed to enable minimally invasive medical diagnosis and therapeutic operations inside stomach. Next, going down to micrometer length-scale mobile robots, the grand challenge is the limitation on scaling down on-board actuators and power sources. Two alternative approaches are proposed to solve this challenge. First, biological cells, e.g. bacteria, attached to the surface of a microrobot are used as on-board microactuators and microsensors using the chemical energy. Bacteria-driven microswimmers are steered using chemical and pH gradients in the environment and remote magnetic fields for targeted drug delivery applications. As the second approach, external actuation of synthetic magnetic microrobots using remote magnetic fields in enclosed spaces is demonstrated. Novel composite materials are used to enable soft magnetic microrobots with diverse locomotion and functional capabilities. Such untethered microrobots are used in bioengineering and medical applications and can self-assemble into different patterns dynamically and statically.

Brief Bio:
Metin Sitti received the BSc and MSc degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 1992 and 1994, respectively, and the PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 1999. He was a research scientist at UC Berkeley during 1999-2002. He is currently a director in Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany and a professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA. His research interests include physical intelligence, miniature mobile robots, bio-inspired micro/nanomaterials, soft robots, and medical robots. He is an IEEE Fellow. He received the SPIE Nanoengineering Pioneer Award in 2011 and NSF CAREER Award in 2005. He received many best paper and video awards in major robotics and adhesion conferences. He is the editor-in-chief of Journal of Micro-Bio Robotics.    

04.05.2017,  13.30, Elektrik Elektronik Müh., Kuzey Yerleşke, Kare Blok  Yorgo İstefanopulos Toplantı Salonu