Carmel Majidi is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, where he leads the Soft Machines Lab. Prior to arriving at CMU, Prof. Majidi was a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University (December 2009 – August 2011) where he worked with Profs. Robert Wood and George Whitesides to explore new paradigms in soft robotics and soft-matter electronics. From December 2007 to November 2009, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials (PRISM) and worked with Profs. David Srolovitz (currently at UPenn) and Mikko Haataja (Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering) to examine the physics and morphological stability of piezoelectric nanostructures. Prof. Majidi received his doctoral training at UC Berkeley, where he worked with Profs. Ronald Fearing and Bob Full to examine natural gecko adhesion and develop a gecko-inspired shear-activated adhesive. Prof. Majidi is a recent recipient of Young Investigator awards from DARPA, ONR, and AFOSR, all for work related to soft-matter robotics and engineering.

AG 1, AG 2, AG 3, AG 4, AG 5, SWS, RG1, MMCI   Info

Public Audience

English

60 Minutes

Saarbrücken

Our group is developing soft-matter circuits and sensors for a dataglove that is as soft and elastic as natural human skin and tissue. In contrast to existing technologies, this glove – or “electronic skin” – will not contain any rigid or inextensible materials. Instead, it will be composed entirely of elastomers and liquid-phase metal alloys. Microchannels of liquid-phase alloy embedded in elastomer are as conductive as conventional metal wiring but remain intact when the surrounding elastomer is stretched to as much as ten times its natural length. In addition to producing these stretchable liquid circuits, we have engineered circuit elements that change their resistance or capacitance in response to stretch, bending, surface pressure, and friction/shear. These elements function as soft-matter sensors that can be placed on the fingertip or joints to measure external pressure, friction, and joint motion. In this talk, I will present emerging design and manufacturing paradigms in soft-matter electronic skin technologies and discuss potential applications in the domains of human-machine interaction and biologically-inspired robotics.

Ellen Fries

9325 4000

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