ABOUT

OUR LAB

McConnell Engineering Building at McGill University
The MACRObotics (Materials, Actuation and Control for RObotics) research group is located at McGill University. Started in 2022, we are a part of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Centre for Intelligent Machines. Our research blends mechanical design, continuum mechanics, and machine learning to create robots that behave safely and with morphological intelligence. We are a fundamental engineering science research group with an emphasis on robotics, design science, and smart materials. We use first principles models, models augmented by data/ML, physical experiments, and prototyping. Our research contributions engage with fields of robotics, mechanical engineering, soft matter physics, and computer science. Specific projects at present include embodied intelligence through distributed acoustic-tactile sensing, jointly optimizing the design and control of a robotic structure, robotic meta-materials for actuation, and prototyping with bio-compatible materials. Outcomes of our research will enable intelligent robots that act cohesively with the world around them. These robots will be collaborators, co-workers and co-explorers with humans. Our research will underpin new engineering tools and frameworks for design of robots and smart structures that exhibit embodied intelligence, resilience, and lighter, simpler controllers. The technologies enabled by our research and developed by our group will transform society in the following ways: improving healthcare through surgical robotics, wearable and sensing systems, improving manufacturing through agile industrial inspection, collaborative machines, and sustainable machine life cycle, improving entertainment through interactive robotics and AR/VR, and improving exploration through embodied-intelligent, autonomous systems that do not destroy their environment.

NEWS

Prof. Tracy Trothen, Lane Desbrough, Prof. Audrey Sedal and Prof. Matthew Robertson
2024/05/31 Congratulations to graduate student Wilfred Mason, whose research poster won 2nd prize at SOFA America Workshop 2024 .

2023/02/16 Our lab gave tours to high school and CÉGEP students at the annual POWE (Promoting Opportunities for Women in Engineering) conference.

2022/10/13 Prof. Sedal participated in the debate, "A Future of Cyborgs: Would you trade your biological parts for bionic ones?" as part of Ingenuity Labs and Queen's University's RAIS Symposium. Watch it here.

2022/08/10 Summer students Anjali Jindal, Portia Rayner, Shiyao Ni and David Brenken have presented at the Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium. David won first place in the "General" category for his project, "Can you hear the shape of a robot?"

2022/06/27 Dr. Chip Schaff, Prof. Sedal and Prof. Matthew Walter have published the paper, “Soft Robots Learn to Crawl: Soft Robots Learn to Crawl: Jointly Optimizing Design and Control with Sim-to-Real Transfer” in Robotics: Science and Systems.

RESEARCH

AUXETIC GEOMETRIES

Soft, inflatable actuator based on auxetic geometry
Materials and structures are considered to be auxetic when the exhibit negative Poisson’s ratio behaviour — i.e. expand (or contract) in orthogonal directions when stretched (or compressed). This property has useful implications in soft robotics, both for shape design and shock absorption.

Sedal, A., et al. “Design of Deployable Soft Robots through Plastic Deformation of Kirigami Structures.” IEEE Robotics & Automation Letters (RA-L), 2020. doi: 10.1109/LRA.2020.2970943

Sedal, A., et al. & Kota, S. “Auxetic Sleeves for Soft Actuators with Kinematically Varied Surfaces.” IEEE Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2018. doi:10.1109/IROS.2018.8594212/

SIM TO REAL

Simulated and real crawling soft robot
Roboticists can accelerate design and testing using simulations before deploying prototypes in the real world. Due to their nonlinear and highly deformable morphologies, soft robots are especially difficult to simulate. Our group researches ways to reduce this "sim-to-real" gap in the context of soft robot learning.

Schaff, C.B. et al. "Soft Robots Learn to Crawl: Jointly Optimizing Design and Control with Sim-to-Real Transfer." Robotics: Science and Systems, 2022.

BIODEGRADABLE ROBOTS

Scanning Electron Microscope images of biodegradabe tough hydrogels
Our group is developing biodegradable, functional materials based on hydrogels for soft robots that are more environmentally friendly.

MECHANICAL MODELS

Inflatable soft actuators
Our group builds physics-based models for soft robotic actuators. Mechanical models capture underlying physical principles of material kinematics, elastic asymmetry, and time-dependent damping to predict how soft robots will behave under different conditions. These models enable us to gain a deeper understanding of soft robots and design effective control strategies for a wide range of applications.

Sedal, A., Wineman, A., “Force reversal and energy dissipation in composite tubes through nonlinear viscoelasticity of component materials.” Proc. Royal. Soc. A, 2020. doi:10.1098/rspa.2020.0299

Sedal, A., et al. “Comparison and Experimental Validation of Predictive Models for Soft, Fiber-Reinforced Actuators.” International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2019. doi:10.1177/0278364919879493

Sedal, A., et al. “A Continuum Model for Fiber-Reinforced Soft Robot Actuators.” ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, 10(2), 2018. doi:10.1115/1.4039101.

PEOPLE

Audrey Sedal

Audrey Sedal

Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Wilfred Mason

Wilfred Mason

PhD Student

Portia Rayner

Portia Rayner

MSc Student (co-adv J Li)

Shiyao Ni

Shiyao Ni

MSc Student

Frances McBride

Frances McBride

PhD Student

David Brenken

David Brenken

MSc Student

Swen Groen

Swen Groen

PhD Student (co-adv L Mongeau)

Sam Smocot

Sam Smocot

MSc Student (co-adv JR Forbes)

Lab alumni: Anjali Jindal B Eng Hon '24, Godswill Agbofode B Eng Hon '23, Alistair Xhayet B Eng Hon '24, Ricardo Cruz UG Researcher Fall '23, Daniela De la Fuente Fall '23
©2023- MACRObotics Research Group