The University of Waterloo is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on 404 hectares of land adjacent to "Uptown" Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates three satellite campuses and four affiliated university colleges. The university offers academic programs administered by six faculties and thirteen faculty-based schools. Waterloo operates the largest post-secondary co-operative education program in the world, with over 20,000 undergraduate students enrolled in the university's co-op program. Waterloo is a member of the U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.
Microbotics is the field of miniature robotics, in particular mobile robots with characteristic dimensions less than 1 mm. The term can also be used for robots capable of handling micrometer size components.
An actuator is a component of a machine that is responsible for moving and controlling a mechanism or system, for example by opening a valve. In simple terms, it is a "mover".
Nanoid robotics, or for short, nanorobotics or nanobotics, is an emerging technology field creating machines or robots whose components are at or near the scale of a nanometer. More specifically, nanorobotics refers to the nanotechnology engineering discipline of designing and building nanorobots with devices ranging in size from 0.1 to 10 micrometres and constructed of nanoscale or molecular components. The terms nanobot, nanoid, nanite, nanomachine and nanomite have also been used to describe such devices currently under research and development.
Swarm robotics is an approach to the coordination of multiple robots as a system which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. ″In a robot swarm, the collective behavior of the robots results from local interactions between the robots and between the robots and the environment in which they act.″ It is supposed that a desired collective behavior emerges from the interactions between the robots and interactions of robots with the environment. This approach emerged on the field of artificial swarm intelligence, as well as the biological studies of insects, ants and other fields in nature, where swarm behaviour occurs.
Gregory Dudek is a chaired professor of computer science at McGill University, was the Director of the McGill Center for Intelligent Machines from 2004 to 2007, and was the Director of the McGill University School of Computer Science from 2008 to 2016. He served as the Scientific Director of the NSERC Canadian Field Robotics Network from 2012 to 2018. He became Scientific Director and Lead Investigatior or it ssuccessor the NSERC Canadian Robotics Network. In 2018, Samsung announced that he would become a VP Research and Lead their new Samsung AI Center in Montreal (SAIC-Montreal). He is the son of poet Louis Dudek, he was made a Dawson Scholar of that university and subsequently James McGill Chair, and directs the mobile robotics laboratory there. He has written over 300 refereed articles on computer vision and robotics, and is co-author of the book Computational Principles of Mobile Robotics which is used to teach robotics at a number of universities [1].
Metin Sitti is the Director of the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, he founded the department in 2014. He is also a Professor in the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich, a Professor at the School of Medicine and College of Engineering at Koç University and co-founder of Setex Technologies Inc. based in Pittsburgh, USA.
Modular self-reconfiguring robotic systems or self-reconfigurable modular robots are autonomous kinematic machines with variable morphology. Beyond conventional actuation, sensing and control typically found in fixed-morphology robots, self-reconfiguring robots are also able to deliberately change their own shape by rearranging the connectivity of their parts, in order to adapt to new circumstances, perform new tasks, or recover from damage.
The Camcon binary actuator is an electronically-controlled electromagnetic actuation device that physically moves in between 2 stable states. Unlike a solenoid the binary actuator technology (BAT) only uses energy when switching in between states. It does not require a constant current running through it.
The Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) is part of the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. It replaced the existing Institute of Robotics, of the ETH Zurich in October 2002, when Prof. Bradley J. Nelson moved from the University of Minnesota, United States, to ETH Zurich and succeeded the Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schweitzer.
The Faculty of Engineering is one of six faculties at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It has 8,569 undergraduate students, 2021 graduate students, 334 faculty and 50,669 alumni making it the largest engineering school in Canada with external research funding from Canadian and international partners exceeding $86.8 million. The Faculty of Engineering houses eight academic units and offers 15 bachelor degree programs in a variety of disciplines.
The Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, also known as the University of Waterloo Stratford School and formerly the University of Waterloo Stratford Campus, is a satellite campus of the University of Waterloo located in Stratford, Ontario, Canada.
Magnetic levitation (maglev) or magnetic suspension is a method by which an object is suspended with no support other than magnetic fields. Magnetic force is used to counteract the effects of the gravitational force and any other forces.
Robot Research Initiative (RRI) is a research institute dedicated to advanced robotics research. It is an affiliated organization of Chonnam National University in Gwangju, Republic of Korea. Prof. Jong Oh Park moved from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology to Chonnam National University in early 2005 and established RRI in March 2008, where he is still actively in charge. RRI is currently a leading institute in the medical robotics field, especially in the area of biomedical micro/nano robotics. RRI is one of the largest institutions among university robotics laboratories in Korea and competes globally.
Bradley James Nelson is an American roboticist and entrepreneur. He has been the Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zurich since 2002 and is known for his research in microrobotics, nanorobotics, and medical robotics.
Soft robotics is a subfield of robotics that concerns the design, control, and fabrication of robots composed of compliant materials, instead of rigid links. In contrast to rigid-bodied robots built from metals, ceramics and hard plastics, the compliance of soft robots can improve their safety when working in close contact with humans.
Peer Fischer is a German robotics researcher, specializing in biological nanorobotics.
Simone Schürle-Finke is a German biomedical engineer, assistant professor, and Principal Investigator for the Responsive Biomedical Systems Laboratory in Switzerland. Schürle is a pioneer in nanorobotic and magnetic servoing technologies.
A biohybrid microswimmer can be defined as a microswimmer that consist of both biological and artificial constituents, for instance, one or several living microorganisms attached to one or various synthetic parts.
A microswimmer is a microscopic object with the ability to move in a fluid environment. Natural microswimmers are found everywhere in the natural world as biological microorganisms, such as bacteria, archaea, protists, sperm and microanimals. Since the turn of the millennium there has been increasing interest in manufacturing synthetic and biohybrid microswimmers. Although only two decades have passed since their emergence, they have already shown promise for various biomedical and environmental applications.
