Events & Talks

Physical Intelligence Talk 04-07-2023 Collective Dynamics: from natural to artificial systems Collective dynamics is referred to as the correlations in the cooperative motion of a many-particle system. It exists on all lengths and time scales and in different systems, ranging from bacteria to robots. Here, the interactions between large numbers of relatively simple individuals result in complex emergent global patterns. The success of these systems is typically associated with their functional robustness and adaptability against perturbations. Here I will discuss swarming with the help of different examples, as viewed from the perspective of the complex system. I will focus on ach... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 24-01-2023 Next-generation Fiber-based Biomedical, Neural, and Robotic Interfaces To investigate and control the biological/neural system, it is essential to develop the techniques and devices capable of recording and modulating cellular signals as well as freely moving inside the body. However, current interfaces are limited in many factors such as mechanical invasiveness, non-adaptability (flexibility/stretchability), less-functionality, and limited form factors. Naturally, there is a huge need for new systems allowing for precise manipulation and monitoring of cellular and neural activities with high adaptability and minimal invasiveness. Application of fiber-based ...

Physical Intelligence Talk 26-09-2022 Ultrafast, Miniature Soft Actuators The quest for an advanced soft robotic actuator technology that is fast and can execute a wide range of application-specific tasks at multiple length scales is still ongoing. Here, we demonstrate a new design and manufacturing strategy that leads to high-speed inflatable actuators exhibiting diverse movements. Our approach leverages the concept of miniaturisation to reduce the required volume of fluid for actuation as well as fibre-reinforcement to improve the efficiency of actuators in converting delivered fluids into fast and predictable movement. To fabricate the designs, we employ a cla... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 22-09-2022 Towards robust and autonomous locomotion in cluttered terrain using insect-scale robots Animals such as mice, cockroaches and spiders have the remarkable ability to maneuver through challenging cluttered natural terrain and have been inspiration for adaptable legged robotic systems. Recent biological research further indicates that body reorientation along pathways of minimal energy is a key factor influencing such locomotion. We propose to extend this idea by hypothesizing that body compliance of soft bodied animals and robots might be an alternate yet effective locomotion strategy to squeeze through cluttered obstacles. We present some early results related to the above usin... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 07-07-2022 Soft Materials Innovation for Health and Sustainability Polymers and water are the major components that constitute most living species on the earth, ranging from animals, plants, and fungi to bacteria. Polymers are also pervasive and indispensable in almost every aspect of our daily life, ranging from food, clothing, housing, and healthcare to transportation, communication and entertainment. Furthermore, over 6% of global electricity generated from coal is used to make plastics, and microplastics are already ubiquitous in global biosphere. Intrigued by their ubiquity and impacts, MIT Zhao Lab is focused on the study and development of soft mate...

Physical Intelligence Talk 31-05-2022 Multifunctional magnetic origami robots Millimeter/centimeter-scale origami robots have recently been explored for biomedical applications due to their inherent shape-morphing capability. However, they mainly rely on passive or/and irreversible deformation that significantly hinders the clinic functions in an on-demand manner. Here, we report magnetically actuated origami robots that can crawl and swim for effective locomotion and targeted drug delivery in severely confined spaces and aqueous environments. We design our robots based on the Kresling origami, whose thin shell structure 1) provides an internal cavity for drug storag... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 11-04-2022 Microrobotics to Micro Aerial Vehicles: Robots Interacting with the Environment The Multi-Scale Robotics & Automation Lab (MSRAL) at Purdue University performs cutting-edge research on robotic and automation systems at various length scales: macro-scale (cm to m), meso-scale (~100's of um to a few mm's), and micro-scale (10's of um to 100's of um). All of the developed systems are designed to interact with the environment in unique ways. In this talk, I will discuss some recent MSRAL microrobotics projects on developing learned models for 2D micromanipulation tasks and different types of families of wireless mobile microrobots driven by external magnetic fields that w... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 09-02-2021 Phosphonate-MOFs,-HOFs: Next generation of microporous compounds Among the other metal organic framework (MOF) familieis, phosphonic acids provide the richest metal binding for MOF synthesis, and they are known to exhibit exceptional thermal and chemical stabilities. Due to the synthetic difficulties, the total number of microporous phosphonate-MOFs are still limited in the literature. In this work, we provide design and synthesis strategies to form semiconductive, proton conductive microporous MOFs and hydrogen bonded organic frameworks (HOFs) constructed using structure directing arylphosphonic acids. Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 22-07-2020 Large-Area Fabrication of Nanoscale Features by UV-NIL @ JR MATERIALS Roll-to-roll UV nanoimprint lithography (R2R-UV-NIL) gains increasing industrial interest for large area nano- and micro-structuring of flexible substrates because it combines nanometer resolution with many square meter per minute productivity. Small-area masters of functional nano and micro surface structures are readily available by various lithographic techniques like e.g. UV-, e-beam- or interference lithography. However, the upscaling of small-area nano- and micro-structured masters into medium size roller molds – often called shims - for R2R-UV-NIL production still remains a bottlene...

Physical Intelligence Talk 23-03-2020 CANCELLED: Controlling biophysical properties across scales: Functional materials for cellular sensing and signal transduction In this talk I will discuss the development of functional materials and their application in modulating the biological microenvironment during cellular sensing and signal transduction. First, I’ll briefly summarize the mechanical, biochemical and physicochemical material properties that influence cellular sensing and subsequent integration with the tissues at the macroscale. Controlling signal transduction at the submicron scale, however, requires careful materials engineering to address the need for minimally invasive targeting of single proteins and for providing sufficient physical stimu...

Physical Intelligence Talk 23-03-2020 Cancelled: Electro-active Ionic Elastomers Motivated by the low voltage driven actuation of ionic Electroactive Polymers (iEAPs) [1] [2], recently we began investigating ionic elastomers. In this talk I will discuss the preparation, physical characterization and electric bending actuation properties of two novel ionic elastomers; ionic polymer electrolyte membranes (iPEM)[3], and ionic liquid crystal elastomers (iLCE).[4] Both materials can be actuated by low frequency AC or DC voltages of less than 1 V. The bending actuation properties of the iPEMs are outperforming most of the well-developed iEAPs, and the not optimize...

Physical Intelligence Talk 12-03-2020 Advanced optoacoustic methods for biological discovery and precision diagnostics Optoacoustic imaging is increasingly attracting the attention of the biomedical research community due to its excellent spatial and temporal resolution, centimeter scale penetration into living tissues, versatile endogenous and exogenous optical absorption contrast. State-of-the-art implementations of multi-spectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) are based on multi-wavelength excitation of tissues to visualize specific molecules within opaque tissues. As a result, the technology can noninvasively deliver structural, functional, metabolic, and molecular information from living tissues. The ... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 14-02-2020 Integrated spintrophoretic platform toward multiplexed cell tweezers The precise delivery of bio-functionalized matters is of great interest from the fundamental and applied viewpoints. Particularly, most existing single cell platforms are unable to achieve large scale operation with flexibility on cells and digital manipulation towards multiplex cell tweezers. Thus, there is an urgent need of innovative techniques to accomplish the automation of single cells. Recently, the flexibility of magnetic shuttling technology using nano/micro scale magnets for the manipulation of particles has gained significant advances and has been used for a wide variet...

Physical Intelligence IS Colloquium 09-01-2020 Kirigami-Inspired Metamaterials - from Morphable Structures to Soft Robots In the search for materials with new properties, there have been great advances in recent years aimed at the construction of mechanical systems whose behaviour is governed by structure, rather than composition. Through careful design of the material’s architecture, new material properties have been demonstrated, including negative Poisson’s ratio, high stiffness-to-weight ratio and mechanical cloaking. While originally the field focused on achieving unusual (zero or negative) values for familiar mechanical parameters, more recently it has been shown that non-linearities can be exploited to ... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 19-12-2019 Robust Planning and Decision -- Towards Safe Robot Tasks and Motions in Complex Environments The demand for safe, robust, and intelligent robotic systems is growing rapidly, given their potential to make our societies more productive and increase our welfare. To achieve this, robots are increasingly expected to operate in human-populated environments, maneuver in remote and cluttered environments, maintain and repair facilities, take care of our health, and streamline manufacturing and assembly lines. However, computational issues limit the ability of robots to plan complex motions in constrained and contact-rich environments, interact with humans safely, and exploit dynamics to gr... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 08-11-2019 Electromechanical transducers for energy harvesting, sensing, and actuation In this talk, Majid Taghavi will briefly discuss the demand for high-performance electromechanical transducers, the current challenges, and approaches he has been pursuing to tackle them. He will discuss multiple electromechanical concepts and devices that he has delivered for low-power energy harvesting, self-powered sensors, and artificial muscle technologies. Majid Taghavi will look into piezoelectric, triboelectric, electrostatic, dielectrophoretic, and androphilic phenomena, and will show his observations and innovations in coupling physical phenomena and developing smart materials and... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 04-11-2019 Liquid-elastomer composites: from basic physics to functional materials Prof. Eric Dufresne will describe some experiments on some simple composites of elastomers and droplets. First, we will consider their composite mechanical properties. He will show how simple liquid droplets can counterintuitively stiffen the material, and how magnetorheological fluid droplets can provide elastomers with magnetically switchable shape memory. Second, we consider the nucleation, growth, and ripening of droplets within an elastomer. Here, a variety of interesting phenomena emerge: size-tunable monodisperse droplets, shape-tunable droplets, and ripening of droplets along st... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 09-10-2019 Lifesaving Capsule Robots and New Opportunites: Manufacturing for Robotics <strong>Prof. Pietro Valdastri's </strong>talk will focus on Medical Capsule Robots. Capsule robots are cm-size devices that leverage extreme miniaturization to access and operate in environments that are out of reach for larger robots. In medicine, capsule robots can be designed to be swallowed like a pill and to diagnose and treat mortal diseases, such as cancer. The talk will move from capsule robots for the inspection of the digestive tract toward a new generation of surgical robots and devices, having a relevant reduction in size, invasiveness, and cost as the main drivers for innovati...

Physical Intelligence Talk 26-09-2019 Soft Aerial Robotics for Infrastructure Manufacturing Future cities and infrastructure systems will evolve into complex conglomerates where autonomous aerial, aquatic and ground-based robots will coexist with people and cooperate in symbiosis. To create this human-robot ecosystem, robots will need to respond more flexibly, robustly and efficiently than they do today. They will need to be designed with the ability to move across terrain boundaries and physically interact with infrastructure elements to perform sensing and intervention tasks. Taking inspiration from nature, aerial robotic systems can integrate multi-functional morphology, new ma... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 25-09-2019 Mag-Guider: permanent magnet systems to steer and image superparamagnetic A new concept of using permanent magnet systems for guiding superparamagnetic nano-particles (SPP) on arbitrary trajectories over a large volume is presented. The same instrument can also be used for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using the inherent contrast of the SPP [1]. The basic idea is to use one magnet system, which provides a strong, homogeneous, dipolar magnetic field to magnetize and orient the particles, and a second constantly graded, quadrupolar field, superimposed on the first, to generate a force on the oriented particles. As a result, particles are guided with constant f... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 22-07-2019 - 22-04-2019 An introduction to bladder cancer & challenges for translational research

Physical Intelligence Talk 16-07-2019 Magnetically and Optically Active Nanoparticles and Polymer Composites Magnetic fields and light can be used to assemble, manipulate, and heat nanoparticles (NPs) and to remotely actuate polymer composites. Simple soft robots will be presented, where incorporation of magnetic and plasmonic NPs makes them responsive to magnetic fields and light. Application of magnetic fields to dispersions of magnetic NPs drives their assembly into chains. Dipolar coupling within the chains is a source of magnetic anisotropy, and chains of magnetic NPs embedded in a polymer matrix can be used to program the response of soft robots, while still using simple architectures. Wavel... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 28-06-2019 Programming Intelligence through Geometry, Topology, and Anisotropy Geometry is concerned with the properties of configurations of points, lines, and circles, while topology is concerned with space, dimension, and transformation. Geometry is also materials independent and scale invariant. By introducing holes and cuts in 2D sheets, we demonstrate dramatic shape change and super-conformability via expanding or collapsing of the hole arrays without deforming individual lattice units. When choosing the cuts and geometry correctly, we show folding into the third dimension, known as kirigami. The kirigami structures can be rendered pluripotent, that is changing ...

Physical Intelligence Talk 04-04-2019 Vignettes of physical ecology of insects and insect based bio-inspiration Insect chemical ecology is a mature, long standing field, with its own journal. By contrast, insect physical ecology is much less studied and the worked scattered. Using work done in my group, I will highlight locomotion, both in granular materials like sand and at the water surface as well as sensing, in particular olfaction and flow sensing. The bio-inspired implementations in MEMS technologies will be the closing chapter. Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 21-03-2019 Reprogramming Microbial Cells With An Engineering Language The molecular connectivity between genes and proteins inside a cell shows a good degree of resemblance with complex electrical circuits. This inspires the possibility of engineering a cell similar to an engineering device by plugging in genetic logic circuits. This approach, which is loosely defined as synthetic biology is an emerging field of bioengineering, where scientist use electrical and computer engineering principle to re-program cellular functions with a potential to solve next generation challenges in medicine, materials, energy, and space travel. In this talk, we discuss our effo... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 14-02-2019 Synthetic Biology, Spatial Programming, and Human Interaction Design with Living Multi-Cell Systems I will share my vision that microbiological systems should be as programmable, interactive, accessible, constructible, and useful as our personal electronic devices. Natural multi-cellular organisms and symbiotic systems achieve complex tasks through division of labor among cells. Such systems transcend current electronics and robotics in many ways, e.g., they synthesize chemicals, generate active physical forms, and self-replicate. Harnessing these features promises significant impact for manufacturing (bioelectronics / smart materials /swarm robotics), health (tissue engineering), chemist...

Physical Intelligence Talk 11-12-2018 Magnetically Guided Multiscale Robots and Soft-robotic Grippers The state-of-the-art robotic systems adopting magnetically actuated ferromagnetic bodies or even whole miniature robots have recently become a fast advancing technological field, especially at the nano and microscale. The mesoscale and above all multiscale magnetically guided robotic systems appear to be the advanced field of study, where it is difficult to reflect different forces, precision and also energy demands. The major goal of our talk is to discuss the challenges in the field of magnetically guided mesoscale and multiscale actuation, followed by the results of our research in... Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 04-12-2018 Microswimmers: From design principles to their collective swimming Active motion of biological and artificial microswimmers is relevant in the real world, in microfluidics, and biological applications but also poses fundamental questions in non-equi- librium statistical physics. Mechanisms of single microswimmers either designed by nature or in the lab need to be understood and a detailed modeling of microorganisms helps to explore their complex cell design and their behavior. It also motivates biomimetic approaches. The emergent collective motion of microswimmers generates appealing dynamic patterns as a consequence of the non-equilibrium. Metin Sitti Zoey Davidson

Physical Intelligence Talk 13-11-2018 Novel directions in the treatment of aneurysms, tumors and venous thrombosis Minimally invasive approaches to vascular disease and cancer have revolutionized medicine. I will discuss novel approaches to vascular bleeding, aneurysm treatment and tumor ablation. Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Talk 24-09-2018 Dexterous and non contact micromanipulation for micro-nano-assembly and biomedical applications This talk presents an overview of recent activities of FEMTO-ST institute in the field of micro-nanomanipulation fo both micro nano assembly and biomedical applications. Microrobotic systems are currently limited by the number of degree of freedom addressed and also are very limited by their throughput. Two ways can be considered to improve both the velocity and the degrees of freedom: non-contact manipulation and dexterous micromanipulation. Indeed in both ways movement including rotation and translation are done locally and are only limited by the micro-nano-objects inertia which is very ...

Physical Intelligence Talk 26-02-2018 Patient Inspired Engineering: Problem, device, solution Minimally invasive approaches to the treatment of vascular diseases are constantly evolving. These diseases are among the most prevalent medical problems today including stroke, myocardial infarction, pulmonary emboli, hemorrhage and aneurysms. </br>I will review current approaches to vascular embolization and thrombosis, the challenges they pose and the limitations of current devices and end with patient inspired engineering approaches to the treatment of these conditions. Metin Sitti

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