Clarence H. Adamson Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Courtesy Appointments, Biomedical Engineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Robotics Institute
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.
2007 Ph.D., EECS, University of California, Berkeley
2001 BS, CEE, Cornell University
NextPittsburgh
MechE’s Carmel Majidi spoke with NextPittsburgh about CMU’s Soft Machines Lab and its research in soft robotics.
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
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
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
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
Introducing the first soft material that can maintain a high enough electrical conductivity to support power hungry devices.
Daily Mail
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
MechE’s Carmel Majidi was quoted by Lifewire on skin wearable systems.
CMU Engineering
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
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
Researchers combined liquid crystal elastomers with a thermoelectric device to develop a stretchable transducer for soft robotics.
Lifewire
MechE’s Carmel Majidi was quoted for on robotic hand manipulation from his research at Soft Machines Lab.