Department Seminar of Prof. Barbara Mazzolai - Towards New Paradigms of Adaptive Robots: Lessons from Nature
SCHOOL OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING SEMINAR
Monday. May 2, 2022 at 14:00
Wolfson Building of Mechanical Engineering, Room 206
Towards New Paradigms of Adaptive Robots: Lessons from Nature
Barbara Mazzolai
Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa
In a constantly changing world, natural organisms’ life and evolution strategies can provide engineers with the rules to design and develop functional embodiments and energy-efficient adaptive behaviours, which are the keys for artificial machines to better deal with unstructured and challenging environments.
With this vision, our approach is to take inspiration from plants and soft animals in order to design robots with high morphological adaptability, distributed sensory systems, as well as energy-saving mechanisms.
Specifically, this talk will show recent results in the field of bioinspired soft robotics based on the investigation of plants and soft animals' features, with the double goal to identify and extract the key principles underlying these biological functions and to translate them in a technological solution, and to improve scientific knowledge on these biological systems that we take as models.
Examples will include artificial self-growing roots for soil monitoring, growing robots inspired by climbing plants for exploration, anchoring systems inspired by plants hooks, soft manipulators inspired by the octopus’ arms for adaptive grasping, biohybrid energy harvesting systems, and self-deployable, biodegradable seed-like soft robots for environmental monitoring.
A new wave of environmentally-responsible robots is envisioned, by merging bioinspired soft robotics, material science, nanocomposite technologies, and environmental science.
Bio: Barbara Mazzolai is Associate Director for Robotics and Director of the Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genoa. From February 2011 to March 2021, she was the Director of the IIT Center for Micro-BioRobotics (CMBR). She graduated in Biology (with Honours) at the University of Pisa, Italy, and received the Ph.D. in Microsystems Engineering from the University of Rome Tor Vergata. She was Deputy Director for the Supervision and Organization of the IIT Centers Network from July 2012 to 2017. From January to July 2017, she was Visiting Faculty at Aerial Robotics Lab, Department of Aeronautics, of Imperial College of London. She is member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Tübingen and Stuttgart, Germany) and member of the Advisory Committee of the Cluster on Living Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems - livMatS (Freiburg, Germany). In 2020, she has obtained the Italian National Scientific Qualification of Full Professor in Bioengineering. Her research activity is in the field of bioinspired soft robotics, combining biology and engineering for advancing technological innovation and scientific knowledge. In particular, she focuses her investigations on plants and invertebrate animals. In the field of plant-inspired robotics, she was the Coordinator of the EU FET-Open PLANTOID project, and currently she is the Coordinator of the EU FET-Proactive Projects GrowBot and I-SEED. In May 2021, she has started the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant “I-Wood”, Forest Intelligence: robotic networks inspired by the Wood Wide Web. She has received various awards for her work, including the Marisa Bellisario Award and the Medal of the Italian Senate. She is author and co-author of more than 260 papers appeared in international journals, books, and conference proceedings. In 2019, she published her book “La Natura Geniale” and in 2021 “Il futuro raccontato dalle piante” (ed. Longanesi).
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