News
New Publication: ArborSim in PLOS Computational Biology
Articulated, branching, OpenSim routing for constructing models of multi-jointed appendages with complex muscle-tendon architecture is now available HERE! Check it out and try it out for yourself!
Talia at Georgia Tech
Talia recently gave a seminar to robotics, mechanical engineering, and biology students at Georgia Tech!
Congratulations Dr. Xun Fu!
Congrats to our first ever PhD student from the EMBiR Lab! We are so proud of you Xun and good luck in your next step!
Teaching in Cambodia
Talia and Juri recently traveled to Cambodia to teach a 2 week biology course! Check out the CamBio tab for more information!
Multimodal Soft Robots for Multifunctional Manipulation, Locomotion, and Human-Machine Interaction Workshop at RoboSoft 2024
We are pleased to announce a full day workshop at RoboSoft on April 14th, 2024 that features a diverse array of presenters in the fields of soft robotics, biology, and neuroscience! Our goal is to provide multifaceted perspectives on the methodologies required to achieve multimodal sensing and actuation in soft robots.
Call for Contributions
We are calling for researchers at all career stages to contribute short talks, posters, and live demonstrations at the workshop. Those interested should submit an 1-page abstract with a maximum of one figure as a PDF to oxfordbiorobotics@gmail.com and zhangzhuang@westlake.edu.cn. Submissions should be related to multimodal behavior of animals, multimodal soft robots, mechanics behind multimodal soft machines, multimodal actuation and sensing, etc. The submission deadline is Thursday, Feburary 15th, 2024 (11:59 PM, your local time).
Submission details: A select number of submissions will be chosen to give short lightening talks during the workshop. Other submissions will be accepted to present posters or live demonstrations. We would like to encourage participants to present live demos if possible! There are two $300 prize funds for the best posters and live demos each.
More information about the workshop and how to submit can be found HERE!
#SICB2024
Juri, Matt, and Ceri present
Great job to everyone for their presentations at SICB 2024! Everyone had wonderful presentations on jerboas, spanning from gene expression to using machine learning to understand behavior!
Batch-Mask on the cover of ICB
Check out our paper on adapting Mask R-CNN specifically to mask backgrounds out of images of animals. This uses all open-source and online resources, so you don’t need a fancy computer to get it to work!
#SICB2022
Karthik and Challen present
They did a great job presenting their research in the Complimentary Session to the Open Solutions in Experimental Biology Symposium!
Artificial Horizons: Exploring Alternative Robotic Futures
The University of Michigan and Collected Detroit showcased an art exhibit competition that featured the overlap of robotics, emerging technologies, and art! It featured wonderful collaborations between artists, roboticists, and robot-artists to explore how art and technology can overlap.
William and Shirley Mirsky Memorial Fellowship
Congratulations to Chae Woo Lim for winning the William and Shirley Mirsky Memorial Fellowship! This fellowship is given to “an ME MSE student who has exhibited outstanding research achievement and high academic achievement.” Chae is currently in both the Image-Guided Medical Robotics Lab advised by Prof. Mark Draelos and the EMBiR Lab!
3D Printed Actuator
Karthik presented our 3D printed actuator at IROS 2022 in Kyoto, Japan. You can build one, too!
Robotics Faculty Award
Talia Moore, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, received the first Robotics Departmental Faculty Award in recognition of “high impact accomplishments benefitting Robotics and the College of Engineering.”
Podcast episode
Ask a Biologist
Dr. Moore was featured on the Ask a Biologist podcast!
#SICB2022
Dr. Moore wins Gans Award
The Carl Gans Young Investigator Award from the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. The award recognizes “an outstanding young investigator for distinguished contributions to the field of comparative biomechanics.” The talk is available on SICB +!
Justice, Anti-Racism, and Integrative Science
Examining Cultural Structures and Functions in Biology
Check out our new publication in Integrative and Comparative Biology that points out ways in which bias has been entrenched in the scientific process and community of scientists through history, and provides starting points for remedying that harm. Written for Biology, but relevant to other fields.
New Research
If you’re interested in comparing anti-predator behaviors across multiple species of snake, check out our new ethogram system published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society! See more info in the Publications page.
Lab news!
New course in Winter 2020!
Quoted in the Atlantic
One Giant Leap for Maggotkind
Dr. Moore was quoted by science writer, Ed Yong, in his coverage of a recent paper on maggot leaping by the Patek Lab. These maggots create a joint in their body, effectively making a “transient leg” to store up and rapidly release energy.
Quoted in New York Times
This Is How You Escape a Cheetah, if You’re an Impala
Dr. Moore was quoted as an expert regarding the latest large mammal predator-prey interaction analysis by the Structure and Motion Laboratory at the Royal Veterinary College.
Support our field assistant!
If you have a few bucks to spare, please consider donating to the GoFundMe Campaign for Ciara Sanchez Paredes to cover her health insurance and visa fees. She was our field assistant in the Peruvian Amazon, and was just accepted into a PhD program at the University of York! She has already received a tuition scholarship to study how environmental pollutants affect animal fitness, which ties in to her body of work analyzing animal behavioral response to environmental disturbance. We would not be able to do our snake research without her!
Ciara and her favorite snake, the Imantodes cenchoa.
IEEE Soft Robotics Debate
Prof. Moore discussed Bioinspired and Biohybrid design in the 3rd Soft Robotics Debate. Click on the photo for more information.
Quoted in NY Times
Meet the Diabolical Ironclad Beetle. It’s Almost Uncrushable.
Dr. Moore was quoted in an article about ultra strong beetle elytra and bio-inspired joints!
New Research
Our first publication on venomous snake anti-predator behavior has just been published in Integrative Organismal Biology. See Publications page for more details.
New Research
From Rodent to Robot
Our work introducing trajectory entropy as a way to measure predator evasion ability was published in Nature Communications. UM News wrote a press release and made a great video to explain our approach.
