M. Khalid Jawed, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER award, the agency’s highest honor for faculty members in the early stages of their teaching and research careers.
The award includes a five-year, $700,000 grant to support Jawed’s research to develop computer simulations that model the complex motions of soft robots. The project looks to automate how such robots are designed and controlled, using a physics-based simulation tool on a computer that runs in real-time.
Currently, soft robots are designed by trial-and-error from building and testing of multiple prototypes.
The ultra-detailed simulation tool developed from this project will be used to design a soft robot inspired by the shape and movements of a bacterium with an undulating tail.
The research will lead…
