A two-armed robot working over an electric-vehicle battery pack laid open on a bench in the lab, its cells and orange high-voltage connectors exposed.

Robotic manipulation, robotic materials, and full-stack humanoids

What we work on

We investigate robotic manipulation, to give robots human-like object manipulation skills, and robotic materials — composite materials that embed sensing, actuation, computation and communication, such as robotic muscles, skin and bones. The two strands now come together in full-stack humanoid development.

Our alumni have become tenure-track professors at R1 universities, graduate students and post-docs at the world's premier research universities, and engineers and scientists at leading companies.

Read our publications Meet the team

Research areas

  • Six side-by-side gripper photographs comparing a force-aware grasp with a traditional one on a paper aeroplane, a raspberry and a hard taco: the traditional grasp crushes each object.

    Robotic manipulation

    Giving robots human-like object manipulation skills through perception, learning and force-aware control.

  • Diagram of a robot arm labelled with a torque sensor at each of its three joints, a six-axis force-torque sensor at the wrist and a grip sensor in the fingers.

    Robotic materials

    Composite materials that embed sensing, actuation, computation and communication — robotic muscles, skin and bones.

  • A small blue-and-black humanoid robot reaching toward a sheet of dark composite material on a workbench.

    Full-stack humanoids

    Bringing manipulation and robotic materials together toward capable, general-purpose humanoid systems.

Recent publications

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