Since 2010, the National Science Foundation National Robotics Initiative has focused on facilitating humans and robots working together, often called co-robotics. As the past two decades have witnessed the expansion of mobile communications into every part of our lives, robotics is poised to do the same — from self-driving cars to medical procedures, from home health care for the elderly to agriculture, and from manufacturing to retail services.

WSU MME faculty are focused on research in many of the robotic technologies that will soon transition co-robots from the lab to everyday life:

• Long, slender, compliant medical devices (Swensen)
• Flexible sensing (Gozen)
• Automated fruit picking and nondestructive inspection (Mo)
• Autonomous marine/aerial/ground vehicles (Matveev)
• Smart material actuators (Gozen & Swensen)
• Tunably-compliant soft robotics (Swensen)