Robotic Instruments

Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation

The Robotic Instruments Group researches physical and system-level robotics, with the goal of creating new robotic capabilities by integrating physical interaction principles, experimental platforms, and sensing, control, and learning methods. We develop robotic instruments and systems that sense, actuate, manipulate, and interact with objects and environments by harnessing diverse physical mechanisms, including contact, acoustic fields, magnetic fields, interfacial forces, and fluidic flows.

Expanding the robotic action space

Our work addresses a broader question: what new physical capabilities can robotic systems gain across scales and environments? This is a central question for robotics itself: while intelligence can guide action, physical and system-level robotics creates new ways to act in the physical world. A key frontier of robotics, therefore, lies in expanding the robotic action space itself: creating interactions, instruments, and platforms that make previously impossible tasks achievable.

These capabilities enable novel ways for robots to interact with matter, from biological samples, fibers, droplets, and particles to membranes and other deformable or shape-changing objects, in air, liquids, and interfacial environments. They allow robotic systems to manipulate objects that are too small, soft, fragile, flexible, easily disturbed, distant, or inaccessible for conventional tools and human-scale manipulation.

Robotic technologies and applications

Building on this system-level approach, we develop dexterous, non-contact, and field-mediated robotic interaction technologies. These technologies advance applications in biomedicine, materials science, semiconductor and optoelectronic device integration, and industrial technologies.

Representative outcomes include biomimetic tools for robotic threading and testing of silk and gel fibers, scientific instruments for analyzing surface wetting and protein viscosity, surface-tension-assisted microassembly for semiconductor integration, methods for targeted drug delivery in cancer research, and intelligent instruments for wound treatment, as well as novel robotic capabilities such as airflow-mediated remote manipulation of objects and high-speed micromanipulation platforms.

Leader of the research group: Prof. Quan Zhou