Date: January 9, 2026
Time: 12:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Location: U.A. Whitaker Building, Room 1103
Virtual Link:  Zoom
Meeting ID: 996 7392 4445
Passcode: 753360

Milad Azizkhani
Ph.D. Student, Robotics
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

Committee:
Dr. Yue Chen (Advisor)
Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Nader Sadegh
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Ye Zhao
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Shreyas Kousik
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Isuru Godage
Engineering Technology & Industrial Distribution
Texas A&M University

Abstract: 
Soft robots were introduced to enable safe interaction, continuous deformation, and adaptability in unstructured environments where rigid robots are limited. While these properties make soft robots attractive for field and manipulation tasks, they also introduce challenges associated with nonlinear, high-dimensional dynamics and computationally expensive modeling, which hinder real-time implementation. As a result, much of the existing work has focused on isolated components such as modeling, design, or sensing, rather than addressing the end-to-end requirements necessary for reliable field deployment, while contact interactions have remained largely unexplored within soft-robot planning and control frameworks. This proposal focuses on the synergistic development of modeling and control methods that complement one another to enable real-time, stable, and high-speed operation of multi-section soft robots. Efficient reduced-order models are paired with control formulations that explicitly account for the robots’ geometry and kinematic structure, enabling reliable task-space execution with high success rates. Building on these developments, the proposal further extends the same modeling and control foundations toward contact-aware planning, where interaction with the environment can be intentionally leveraged to enhance manipulation capabilities. By unifying real-time deployability with contact-aware planning under a consistent modeling perspective, this work advances soft robots toward practical and effective use in real-world applications.