Research

When most people picture robots, they see machines with rigid parts. The robots developed by Cagdas Onal, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and robotics engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), are soft, with parts made from deformable plastics and rubber. Soft robots are safer to operate around people and are ideally suited to carry out a variety of tasks that their traditionally rigid cousins can’t, including moving snake-like through confined spaces. But their ability to bend in many axes and change their shape make them unable to carry heavy loads, which limits their utility. Onal is building a new class of variable-stiffness robots that have which have rigidity and softness. His innovative designs draw on the ancient art of paper folding, known as origami.

In a world where humans and robots are increasingly co-existing, student researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) are working on projects to help humans better interact with their robotic partners, and to enable robots to be more capable, more efficient and more user-friendly human assistants. Here a student team has built a robot that can take visitors on a tour of a campus building. Using cameras and sensors, the team also employed speech recognition, computer vision and navigation technologies to create a robot that can recognize and move around obstacles in its way and take people to multiple locations. It also can communicate with its users verbally and using facial expressions on a computer screen.

Raghvendra Cowlagi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), conducts research on a number of problems related to the challenges presented by autonomous vehicles, including optimal methods for planning and controlling their movements. Much of his research focuses on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones. In one current project, he is developing methods that will allow teams of unmanned aerial and terrestrial vehicles (UXVs) to cooperate as they respond to emergencies, including natural disasters.

Inspired by nature, Carlo Pinciroli, assistant professor of computer science and robotics engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), leads a research team in the Novel Engineering for Swarm Technologies Laboratory that is trying to give swarms of fairly simple robots a sort of collective intelligence, so they can sense their environment, communicate, and work together efficiently and safely.

This video will demonstrate some basic science behind how concussion occurs in the brain. A concussion is the damage to the brain caused by external head impact. In particular, the rotational part of the impact is the primary reason to cause the brain to change shape. This will lead to the so-called “brain deformation” that stretches brain tissue, in particular, the white matter region. This part of the brain connects different gray matter regions of the brain, and will, therefore, disrupt the information flow within the brain. When brain deformation is too great, injury will occur, which leads to concussive symptoms.