Smart Microsystems Lab
Taking a systems approach to develop innovative robots and sensors for addressing real-world challenges
SML News
Xinda Qi Completed PhD Study and will be joining Amazon Robotics
Congratulations to Xinda Qi, who has successfully completed his PhD study at Michigan State. His dissertation was titled “Bioinspired Soft…
Dr. Tan Elected Next Editor-in-Chief of IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics
Dr. Xiaobo Tan has been elected the next Editor-in-Chief for IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (TMECH), with his term officially starting…
SML Awarded New Patent on Flexible SensorOctober 9, 2024SML was awarded a new patent on FLEXIBLE SENSOR. [...]
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Xinda Qi Completed PhD Study and will be joining Amazon RoboticsOctober 9, 2024Congratulations to Xinda Qi, who has successfully completed his PhD study at Michigan State. His dissertation was titled “Bioinspired Soft Robots: Design, Modeling, and Control”. He will be joining Amazon Robotics as an Applied Scientist and work on robot motion planning and control. [...]
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Dr. Tan Elected Next Editor-in-Chief of IEEE/ASME Transactions on MechatronicsAugust 21, 2024Dr. Xiaobo Tan has been elected the next Editor-in-Chief for IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (TMECH), with his term officially starting in January 2026. TMECH is a top journal in mechatronics, with a current impact factor of 6.1. It is a Q1 (first quartile) journal in all categories of Manufacturing Engineering, Automation and Control Systems, Mechanical Engineering, and …
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Yu Mei Received AIM 2024 Best Student Paper AwardAugust 19, 2024Congratulations to Yu Mei, who won the Best Student Paper Award at the 2024 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM) held in Boston in July 2024. This work, “Simultaneous shape reconstruction and force estimation of soft bending actuators using distributed inductive curvature sensors,” was coauthored by Yu Mei, Lei Peng, Hongyang Shi, Xinda …
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Smart panel offering potential solution to invasive sea lamprey controlAugust 5, 2024A team of Michigan State University researchers, including a behavioral ecologist and two engineers, has been commissioned by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC) to develop a pioneering selective fish barrier in Traverse City over the next decade. This barrier, called FishPass, aims to be a revolutionary solution for invasive species control. The objective is …
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Contamination forces beach closures: MSU experts can commentJune 13, 2024Bacterial contamination has already led to the closure of at least eight beaches across Michigan, according to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. Although some have since reopened, more closures are expected throughout the summer. Several pollutants can cause beach closures in Michigan and elsewhere. Sanitary and combined sewer overflows, groundwater runoff, …
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SML Projects
Active Projects
Soft Robotic Systems for Safe and Accurate Medical Diagnosis and Intervention (MSU Foundation)September 15, 2020Sponsor: MSU Foundation (Strategic Partnership Grant)
PI: Prof. Xiaobo Tan, Co-PIs: Prof. Tong Gao (Mechanical Engineering and Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering), John Kruger (Small Animal Clinical Sciences), Chunqi Qian (Radiology), Chuan Wang (Electrical & Computer Engineering).
This internal grant aims to build an interdisciplinary team at MSU that advances soft robotic systems for various applications, including addressing medical challenges, such as accessing hard-to-reach organs for medical imaging and interventions. The team consists of experts on soft robotics, computational modeling, electronic skins, MRI imaging, and animal clinical sciences. [...]
A Smart Panel System for In-situ Detection of Adult Sea Lamprey (Great Lakes Fishery Commission)September 15, 2020Exploiting the Unexploited: A Smart Panel System for In-situ Detection of Adult Sea Lamprey
Sponsor: Great Lakes Fishery Commission (Sea Lamprey Research Program)
PI: Prof. Xiaobo Tan, Co-PIs: Christopher Holbrook (Hammond Bay Biological Station, U.S. Geological Survey), and Chuan Wang (Electrical & Computer Engineering).
Invasive species control and assessment strategies often seek to exploit species-specific behaviors or traits. Simply put, adult sea lampreys suck like no other organisms in the Great Lakes. However, this characteristic has not been directly exploited to enumerate or control sea lampreys. A low-cost smart panel capable of sensing, recording, and possibly responding to sea lamprey attachment could enhance selective fish passage devices (e.g., triggering localized electrical stimulus to repel or deter a lamprey), spearhead new research to address critical gaps in sea lamprey life history and ecology (e.g., refuge-seeking behavior and habitat characteristics, stream entry timing), and have broad-ranging applications to sea lamprey assessment and control (e.g., new trapping system design).
This project aims to design, develop, and test a low-cost portable smart panel system that autonomously (1) senses when an adult sea lamprey has attached to the panel, (2) records and transmits event data (time, pressure statistics, event duration), and (3) triggers auxiliary mechanisms, for example, activating a localized electric field to repel the attached lamprey. The proposed smart panel will have a modular architecture – they can be deployed individually at spots of interest (stream entries, trap sites, refuge habitats) or assembled into a larger panel for deployment at places like dams. The panel could incorporate an attractant (e.g., pheromone polymer emitter) to enhance encounter and attachment rate. Wireless cellular data module could remotely transfer data in near real-time from field to office. [...]
Circuit Dynamics of Sensorimotor Integration and Decision Making in Octopus (NIH)September 15, 2020https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2020/no-bones-about-it-octopus-may-be-the-key-to-smart-prosthetics/ [...]