Robotics Engineering Colloquium Series: Dr. Onur Özcan | Miniature Bio-Inspired Robots: Rigid to Complian

Wednesday, April 12, 2023
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
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Speaker

Robotics Engineering Colloquium Series

Dr. Onur Özcan, Bilkent University Mechanical Engineering Department

Miniature Bio-Inspired Robots: Rigid to Compliant

Wednesday, April 12th, 2023
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Zoom Link : https://wpi.zoom.us/j/94166856868

Abstract: As robotics researchers, we try to build highly mobile, efficient, and robust robots similar to living organisms in terms of locomotion performance. Achieving high-performance locomotion becomes more of a challenge as the size scale of the robot decreases. We observe miniature robots’ biological counterparts, i.e., insects and small animals, having extraordinary locomotion capabilities such as running, jumping, and climbing robustly over various terrains. Despite the recent advances in the field of miniature robotics, the design and capabilities of miniature robots are still limited due to the unavailability of fabrication methods, the rigidity of our mechanical structures, and our poor grasp of the physics behind miniature robot locomotion. This talk addresses these challenges, focusing on the mechanical design and fabrication of Bilkent miniature robots, the effects of their structural compliance on robot locomotion, and the modeling efforts conducted to understand locomotion at the miniature scale.

Bio: Dr. Onur Özcan creates bio-inspired miniature robots through research in mechanical engineering and robotics interface. He received his B.S. (2007) in Mechatronics Engineering at Sabanci University and his M.S. (2010) and Ph.D. (2012) in Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, where he worked on the control and automation of tip-directed nanoscale fabrication. As a postdoctoral fellow, he conducted research on the fabrication and control of miniature crawling robots at Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering from April 2012 to January 2015. Following his postdoctoral position, he joined Bilkent University Mechanical Engineering Department as an Assistant Professor in January 2015. He leads the Bilkent Miniature Robotics Lab and is active in research in miniature and soft robotics fields. He runs several Tubitak (The national science foundation of Turkey)-funded projects on miniature and soft robots and serves as an associate editor for the soft robotics field in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

Audience(s)

DEPARTMENT(S):

Robotics Engineering