Directory

Carmel Majidi’s career mission is to discover materials, hardware architectures, and fabrication methods that allow robots and machines to behave like soft biological organisms, and be safe for contact with humans. The aim is to replace the bulky and rigid hardware in existing robots with soft, lightweight, and deformable technologies that match the functionality of natural biological tissue. Currently, his group is focused on filled-elastomer composites and soft microfluidic systems that exhibit unique combinations of mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties and can function as “artificial” skin, nervous tissue, and muscle for soft robotics and wearables. He’s particularly interested in approaches that are practical from a rapid prototyping and robotics implementation perspective. This includes efforts to enable robust mechanical and electrical interfacing between soft-matter systems and conventional microelectronics and hardware.

Office
210 Roberts Engineering Hall
Phone
412.268.2492
Fax
412.268.3348
Email
cmajidi@andrew.cmu.edu
Google Scholar
Carmel Majidi
Websites
Soft Machines Lab

Soft & Stretchable Computing Materials

Electronic Tattoos for Wearable Computing: Stretchable, Robust, and Inexpensive

Self-Healing Electrical Material

Engineering new materials for wearable computing

Soft Machines: New Classes of Materials for Next-Generation Wearable Devices

Education

2007 Ph.D., EECS, University of California, Berkeley

2001 BS, CEE, Cornell University

Media mentions


NextPittsburgh

Majidi talks soft robotics research and findings

MechE’s Carmel Majidi spoke with NextPittsburgh about CMU’s Soft Machines Lab and its research in soft robotics.

Scientific American

Majidi comments on new material for “soft robotics” in Scientific American

MechE’s Carmel Majidi talks about a new low-density gel material that is able to conduct electricity to power a motor in Scientific American. “There are so many possibilities that arise when you take machines and robots out of the hard case and engineer them out of materials that are soft and squishy,” Majidi says.

World Economic Forum

Majidi, Yao quoted on softbotics

MechE’s Carmel Majidi spoke to the World Economic Forum about softbotics and their capabilities. “Matching how animals transition from walking to swimming to crawling to jumping is a grand challenge for bio-inspired and soft robotics,” Majidi said.

Science Friday

Majidi speaks on Science Friday about self-healing softbotics material

MechE’s Carmel Majidi talks with Science Friday about a new breakthrough in the field of softbotics: a new material that is able to heal itself.

Associated Press

Majidi discusses breakthroughs in softbotics

MechE’s Carmel Majidi and his research team engineered the first self-healing soft material with electrical conductivity, low stiffness, and high stretchability—a breakthrough in the world of softbotics and beyond.

CMU Engineering

Engineering breakthrough in softbotics

Introducing the first soft material that can maintain a high enough electrical conductivity to support power hungry devices.

Daily Mail

Majidi discusses the future of shape-shifting robotics

MechE’s Carmel Majidi, and a team of researchers have created a shape-shifting robot that can hold objects 30 times its own mass. The team tested the robot through a series of obstacles, including jumping over moats and removing foreign objects from a model stomach.

Lifewire

Majidi discusses use of skin-wearable computers

MechE’s Carmel Majidi was quoted by Lifewire on skin wearable systems.

CMU Engineering

Scaling up the production of liquid metal circuits

At Carnegie Mellon, mechanical engineering researchers have developed a new scalable and reproducible manufacturing technique that could accelerate the mainstream adoption and commercialization of soft and stretchable electronics.

Scientific American

Majidi quoted in article on electronic skin

MechE’s Carmel Majidi was quoted in Scientific American about the work in his lab that specializes in developing soft materials for human-compatible electronics.

CMU Engineering

A cooler side to soft robotics

Researchers combined liquid crystal elastomers with a thermoelectric device to develop a stretchable transducer for soft robotics.

Lifewire

Majidi quoted on complex robotic hand manipulation

MechE’s Carmel Majidi was quoted for on robotic hand manipulation from his research at Soft Machines Lab.