Events Calendar

Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series

Speaker: Mike Tolley, Assistant Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of California at San Diego

Talk Title: Design and Fabrication for Biologically Inspired Robotics

Series: Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Seminar Series

Abstract: Robotics has the potential to address many of today's pressing problems in fields ranging from healthcare to manufacturing to disaster relief. However, the traditional approaches used on the factory floor do not perform well in unstructured environments. I believe the key to solving many of these challenges will be to explore new, nontraditional designs. Fortunately, nature surrounds us with examples of novel ways to navigate and survive in the real world. Through evolution, biology has already explored myriad solutions to many of the challenges facing robotics. At the UC San Diego Bioinspired Robotics and Design Lab, we seek to borrow the key principles of operation from biological systems, and apply them to engineered solutions. In this talk I will discuss approaches to the design and fabrication of soft robotic systems, as well as systems which achieve self assembly by folding.

Biography: Michael T. Tolley is assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and director of the Bioinspired Robotics and Design Lab at the Jacobs School of Engineering, UC San Diego (bioinspired.eng.ucsd.edu). Before joining the mechanical engineering faculty at UCSD in the fall of 2014, he was a postdoctoral fellow and research associate at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University. He received the Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering with a minor in computer science from Cornell University in 2009 and 2011, respectively. He received the B. Eng. degree in mechanical engineering from McGill University in Montreal in 2005. His research interests include biologically inspired robotics and design, origami-inspired fabrication, self-assembly, and soft robotics.

Host: Prof. Nestor Perez-Arancibia

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Valerie Childress