MechE Seminar: Bioinspired Robots: Fabrication, Design, and Exploitation of Embodied Intelligence
Event details
| Date | 13.07.2026 |
| Hour | 12:00 › 13:00 |
| Speaker | Prof. Josie Hughes, Institute of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering, EPFL |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract: Natural systems provide many examples of embodied intelligence, namely the exploitation of both brain and body to exhibit behaviours which are emergent, robust, or go beyond their individual component capabilities. This talk will explore a number of approaches to designing and fabricating robots that can robustly interact with the environment through embodied intelligence. This involves developing and exploiting materials, structures, and sensory-motor control to provide robots with robustness in their environments and tasks. These approaches stem not only from bio-inspiration and biomimicry but also explore computational approaches to design. The applications and new capabilities enabled by these robots will be discussed.
Biography: Josie Hughes is an Assistant Professor at EPFL where she established the CREATE Lab in 2021. She undertook her undergraduate, master's, and PhD studies at the University of Cambridge, joining the Bio-inspired Robotics Lab (BIRL). Following this, she worked as a postdoctoral associate at MIT's CSAIL in the Distributed Robotics Lab. Her research focuses on developing novel design paradigms for robotic structures that exploit their physicality and interactions with the environment. This includes the development of robotic hands, soft manipulators, locomoting robots, and automation systems for applications focused on sustainability and science. She was awarded an SNSF Starting Grant and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Early Career Award. Her work has been published in prestigious journals including Science Robotics, Nature Machine Intelligence, and Science Advances.
Biography: Josie Hughes is an Assistant Professor at EPFL where she established the CREATE Lab in 2021. She undertook her undergraduate, master's, and PhD studies at the University of Cambridge, joining the Bio-inspired Robotics Lab (BIRL). Following this, she worked as a postdoctoral associate at MIT's CSAIL in the Distributed Robotics Lab. Her research focuses on developing novel design paradigms for robotic structures that exploit their physicality and interactions with the environment. This includes the development of robotic hands, soft manipulators, locomoting robots, and automation systems for applications focused on sustainability and science. She was awarded an SNSF Starting Grant and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Early Career Award. Her work has been published in prestigious journals including Science Robotics, Nature Machine Intelligence, and Science Advances.
Practical information
- General public
- Free