Event
MRC Seminar: Where the rubber meets the code
Friday, March 7, 2025
2:00 p.m.
JMP 2116
Where the rubber meets the code: Supporting control in soft robots through better sensor design
Dr. Kris Dorsey
Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Sciences
Northeastern University
Abstract
Physically-soft mechanical sensors and actuators growing in their new applications to wearable devices, robotics, and human-machine interfaces. To realize their promise, roboticists and designers must be able to reconfigure and control their properties to achieve the target performance—a capacity that is lagging due in part to sensors for self- and external sensing (proprioception and exteroception).
I will discuss the challenges to sensing in these soft applications and present recent work applying these concepts to origami robots, grippers, and wearable devices. I will also present work in enhancing the stability and mechanical selectivity of stretchable sensors and discuss applications for such sensors in wearable healthcare applications and soft robotics.
Biography
Kris Dorsey is an associate professor in the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Sciences and a core faculty member at the Institute for Experiential Robotics at Northeastern University. Previously, Dorsey was a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Diego, a faculty member in the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, and an MLK Visiting Associate Professor at the Media Lab at MIT.
Dorsey graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and earned her Bachelors of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Olin College. Dorsey’s current research interests include reconfigurable, novel morphology, and active soft sensors and the design of soft sensors for soft robot actuators and wearable medical and rehabilitation devices. Dorsey’s work has been recognized by an NSF CAREER award and the Emerging Leader ABIE Award in honor of Denice Denton.
