Michigan Robotics News

A graduate student in the background operates two robotic microsurgery arms in the foreground that are operating on the thin skin of an egg.

Surgeons “walking across the retina” project earns NIH Innovator Award

October 7, 2025

A project to improve how delicate microsurgeries are conducted by scaling up tissue in virtual reality could advance medicine.

Three men walk through a lab with a treadmill built into the floor behind them. In the center, Seelhoff wears a prosthetic leg that stores its electronics inside a slim calf-shaped casing. On the left, Kevin carries an open laptop computer.

Expanding a commercial robotic prosthetic leg's benefits with advanced control

October 6, 2025

Paired with custom control software, Össur's powered knee prosthesis helped study participants sit, stand and walk more easily.

A black and white sonar image of a sunken ship.

Sonar shipwreck dataset expands national AI infrastructure

October 3, 2025

A dataset of shipwreck sonar scans collected by University of Michigan and Michigan Technological University researchers has been selected for inclusion in the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot.

Several renders of the SPARC robot as it travels precisely along paths on the ground, transitions to climbing walls, and travels along the wall with and without a payload.

Soft origami robot inch-worms up walls

September 24, 2025

Researchers developed a soft robot that can crawl along a flat path and climb up vertical surfaces using its unique origami structure with an accuracy typically seen only in rigid robots.

Trushant Adeshara and Manveer Singh stand next to a booth table for Michigan Robotics while demonstrating a small mobile robot and a quadruped robot at a conference.

Robotics Outreach Ambassadors of 2025

September 22, 2025

We honor students who exemplify enthusiastic outreach through their extraordinary service to community.

Illustration of beakers with a robotic arm, chemical compound, and test tubes

manufacturing robotics

Digital twin lab could transform how new materials are discovered

September 21, 2025

The researchers received funding to build an AI-powered lab that learns and adapts to accelerate development of better batteries and semiconductors.

Concept illustration of a driver listening to their car talk. Image credit: Nicole Smith, made with Midjourney

autonomous & connected vehicles

Sound familiar? Matching voices boost trust in self-driving cars

August 28, 2025

A University of Michigan study found that when a self-driving car's voice matches the driver's gender, people report higher levels of trust in the vehicle.

A robot made of three tubes and cables connecting them tumbles across the floor in different arrangements in this composite image.

motion planning

Unique robot shape adopts advanced actuators for better performance

August 13, 2025

Using quasi-direct drive actuators, researchers developed a faster tensegrity robot with better capabilities for autonomy and payload capacity.

Digital twins for manufacturing: industry collaborators wanted

manufacturing robotics

Digital twins for manufacturing: industry collaborators wanted

July 14, 2025

Focusing on precompetitive problems, such as enabling communication between digital twins, U-M and ASU are seeking industry partners for an NSF research center.