Carmel Majidi
Professor | Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA, UNITED STATES
Carmel Majidi’s mission is to discover materials and methods that allow robots and machines to behave like soft biological organisms.
Biography
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.
Areas of Expertise (9)
Soft Robotics
Medical Device Manufacturing
Wearable Robotics
Medical Devices
Advanced Manufacturing
Devices and Material Manipulation
Robotics
Cybersecurity and Privacy
Micro/Nanoengineering
Media Appearances (6)
Paleobionics: Dinosaurs are back
CMU News online
2024-10-16
In a recent episode of Where What If Becomes What's Next, mechanical engineering professors Carmel Majidi and Aaron Johnson, with postdocotral researcher Aja Mia Carter, discuss paleobionics. Paleobionics is an emerging field at CMU that uses robots and Softbotics to help scientists better understand the biomechanical factors that drove evolution using extinct organisms. This understanding also inspires future robotic design.
Carnegie Mellon core partner in new center to improve robot dexterity selected to receive up to $52 million
CMU News online
2024-08-21
Carmel Majidi will lead a research thrust in a new multi-institutional collaboration that has received $26 million from the National Science Foundation to launch an Engineering Research Center (ERC) dedicated to revolutionizing the ability of robots to amplify human labor.
First healthcare device powered by body heat made possible with liquid-based metals
CMU News online
2024-07-23
“Compared to our past research, this design improves power density by roughly 40 times or 4,000%. The liquid metal epoxy composite enhances thermal conductivity between the thermoelectric component and the device’s point of contact on the body,” explained Carmel Majidi, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Soft Machines Laboratory.
769: Dr. Carmel Majidi: Making New Materials for Soft and Flexible Bio-Inspired Robots
People Behind the Science Podcast online
2024-07-15
In our interview Carmel discusses his experiences in life and science.
Researchers resurrect long-extinct fossil creature as a robot
Ars Technica online
2024-03-11
It was also challenging to replicate the soft muscular stem of the pleurocystitids, since the researchers could not use conventional motors, which are too bulky and rigid. “Instead, we needed to use a special ‘artificial muscle’ wire composed of nickel and titanium alloy that contracts in response to electrical stimulation. This allowed us to create a stem-like actuator that matched the flexibility of a natural muscular stem,” Carmel Majidi, senior study author and a professor of mechanical engineering at CMU, added.
What Are Shape-Shifting Robots?
Built In online
2023-10-24
To the casual viewer, footage of the mechanical monster clumsily inching across the ground may seem to hint at why the pleurocystitid is long gone. But according to Richard Desatnick, a Carnegie Mellon PhD student under the direction of mechanical engineering faculty Phil LeDuc and Carmel Majidi, the ancient animal likely deserves more credit.
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Industry Expertise (1)
Mechanical/Industrial Engineering
Accomplishments (5)
Inno Fire Awards Trailblazing Innovators, Pittsburgh Business Times (professional)
2023
PopTech Science Fellow (professional)
2013
George Tallman Ladd Award and Carnegie Institute of Technology Dean’s Early Career Fellowship, Carnegie Mellon University (professional)
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National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Early Career Faculty Award (professional)
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Young Faculty Awards, Office of Naval Research (ONR); Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) (professional)
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Education (2)
University of California, Berkeley: Ph.D., EECS 2007
Cornell University: B.S., CEE 2001
Links (3)
Patents (2)
Digital patch for discrete signaling, a baseball glove including same, and related method of manufacture
US12128290B1
2024 An apparatus for communication, a system thereof, and methods of manufacture thereof are provided. The apparatus comprises a body and a printed circuit board (PCB) operatively coupled to the body. The PCB comprises a processing unit, a first communication module operatively coupled to the processing unit, and an array of assemblies. The first communication module is configured to communicate with a secondary communication module wirelessly. The array of assemblies comprises at least two rows and at least two columns. Each assembly comprises a switch and a light. The array of assemblies are operatively coupled to the processing unit. Each light is configured to change a state responsive to at least one of a change in state by the switch within the same assembly and a control signal from the first communication module.
Integrated electronic device with flexible and stretchable substrate
US12096553B2
2024 A flexible and stretchable integrated electronic device includes a substrate having a stiffness gradient, wherein a rigid electronic device is embedded within the substrate. The stiffness gradient within the substrate prevents delamination at the interface between the substrate and the embedded device. The stiffness gradient is accomplished by providing at least two distinct zones in the substrate with uniform stiffness, with each zone decreasing in stiffness as in a distance from the embedded device increases, or the gradient is accomplished by having a zone with a varying stiffness.
Articles (5)
A compliant metastructure design with reconfigurability up to six degrees of freedom
Nature Communications2025 Compliant mechanisms with reconfigurable degrees of freedom are gaining attention in the development of kinesthetic haptic devices, robotic systems, and mechanical metamaterials. However, available devices exhibit limited programmability and form-customizability, restricting their versatility. To address this gap, we propose a metastructure concept featuring reconfigurable motional freedom and tunable stiffness, adaptable to various form factors and applications. These devices incorporate passive flexures and actively stiffness-changing rods to modify kinematic freedom. A rational design pipeline informs the flexures’ topological arrangements, geometric parameters, and control signals based on targeted mobilities, enabling the creation of unitary joints with up to six degrees of freedom.
Exploiting instabilities to enable large shape transformations in dielectric elastomers
Physical Review Applied2025 Dielectric elastomers have significant potential for new technologies, ranging from soft robots to biomedical devices, driven by their ability to display complex shape changes in response to electrical stimulus. However, an important shortcoming of current realizations is that large voltages are required for useful actuation strains. This work proposes, and demonstrates through theory and numerical simulations, a strategy to achieve large and controlled actuation by exploiting the electromechanical analogue of the Treloar-Kearsley (TK) instability. The key idea is to use the fact that the TK instability is a symmetry-breaking bifurcation, which implies the existence of a symmetry-driven constant-energy region in the energy landscape.
Fracture-driven power amplification in a hydrogel launcher
Nature Materials2024 Robotic tasks that require robust propulsion abilities such as jumping, ejecting or catapulting require power-amplification strategies where kinetic energy is generated from pre-stored energy. Here we report an engineered accumulated strain energy-fracture power-amplification method that is inspired by the pressurized fluidic squirting mechanism of Ecballium elaterium (squirting cucumber plants). We realize a light-driven hydrogel launcher that harnesses fast liquid vapourization triggered by the photothermal response of an embedded graphene suspension. This vapourization leads to appreciable elastic energy storage within the surrounding hydrogel network, followed by rapid elastic energy release within 0.3 ms. These soft hydrogel robots achieve controlled launching at high velocity with a predictable trajectory.
Stretchable thermoelectric generators for self‐powered wearable health monitoring
Advanced Functional Materials2024 As continuous wearable physiological monitoring systems become more ubiquitous in healthcare, there is an increasing need for power sources that can sustainably power wireless sensors and electronics for long durations. Wearable energy harvesting with thermoelectric generators (TEGs), in which body heat is converted to electrical energy, presents a promising way to prolong wireless operation and address battery life concerns. In this work, high performance TEGs are introduced that combine 3D printed elastomers with liquid metal epoxy polymer composites and thermoelectric semiconductors to achieve elastic compliance and mechanical compatibility with the body.
Bistable soft jumper capable of fast response and high takeoff velocity
Science Robotics2024 In contrast with jumping robots made from rigid materials, soft jumpers composed of compliant and elastically deformable materials exhibit superior impact resistance and mechanically robust functionality. However, recent efforts to create stimuli-responsive jumpers from soft materials were limited in their response speed, takeoff velocity, and travel distance. Here, we report a magnetic-driven, ultrafast bistable soft jumper that exhibits good jumping capability (jumping more than 108 body heights with a takeoff velocity of more than 2 meters per second) and fast response time (less than 15 milliseconds) compared with previous soft jumping robots. The snap-through transitions between bistable states form a repeatable loop that harnesses the ultrafast release of stored elastic energy.
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