MechE Seminar Series: Tommaso Ranzani

Speaker: Tommaso Ranzani

Title: Enabling soft robots to function in complex environments.

Abstract: Traditional rigid robots face significant limitations in complex, unstructured environments. In contrast, soft robots, drawing inspiration from biological systems, offer enhanced adaptability, resilience, and safer interactions with natural surroundings. However, replicating the soft, dexterous functionality of living organisms introduces fundamental challenges in actuation, control, and stiffness modulation. This talk highlights our research aimed at overcoming these challenges, with a focus on developing strategies for controlling and tuning the mechanical properties of soft robots. We explore the real-world deployment of multi-degree-of-freedom soft robots and present our efforts to integrate onboard control and computational systems to increase their autonomy. In particular, we detail progress in enabling electronic control of fluidic soft robots with multiple degrees of freedom. The talk concludes with a discussion of our work in medical robotics, specifically the development of soft robotic technologies to support minimally invasive surgical procedures, including precise and safe interventions within the dynamic and delicate environment of the beating heart.

About the Speaker: Tom Ranzani earned his Ph.D. in BioRobotics from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy, and later completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard’s Wyss Institute. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Boston University, where he founded the Morphable Biorobotics Lab in 2018. In 2020, he received the NIH Trailblazer Award. His research focuses on soft and bioinspired robotics for use in challenging environments, from underwater exploration to applications within the human body.