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Technologies 5

• Soft artificial muscles for soft robots
  Soft robots, similar to living organisms, are made from compliant materials that allow them great flexibility and adaptability for tasks at the human-robot interface and elsewhere. To enable soft robotic missions in different industrial, exploratory, and medical settings, engineers are trying to equip them with artificial muscles that could enable them to move smoothly, efficiently...
• Flexible force sensors for microrobotics
  As robots have gotten smaller, softer, and more maneuverable, they’ve opened up myriad possibilities for interacting with objects on a tiny scale, including on and in the human body. However, human hands still have a major advantage over robots: the ability to feel. Researchers at the Wyss Institute are using the Pop-Up MEMS manufacturing technique...
• Flexible robots to assist in endoscopic procedures
  Endoscopes are a standard device in gastrointestinal medicine, used by surgeons to noninvasively see and take biopsies from tissues along the entire digestive tract. However, endoscopes themselves amount to hollow tubes with a camera and light attached, through which different instruments are threaded to the procedure site, and are rigid and not very maneuverable. Two...
• Soft Wearable Shoulder-Assistive Device
  Patients suffering from neuromuscular conditions such as muscular dystrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and incomplete spinal cord injury are, in many cases, confronted with partial or total loss of their shoulder strength and mobility that greatly limit their abilities to perform activities of daily living. In the long term, this is believed to increase their...
• Soft Robotic Glove
  The majority of patients with partial or total loss of hand motor abilities, including those suffering from debilitating disorders like muscular dystrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and incomplete spinal cord injury, experience greatly reduced quality of life due to their inability to perform many daily activities. Tasks often taken for granted by the able-bodied become...

News 28

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• Press Release Hansjörg Wyss, Harvard M.B.A. ’65, Gives Unprecedented Third Major Gift to Harvard to Support the Wyss Institute’s Mission to Develop and Commercialize World-Changing Technologies
  June 7, 2019
• Video/​Animation Saving the Planet with Robots, Microbes, and Nanotechnology
  June 5, 2019
• Video/​Animation A rubber computer eliminates the last hard components from soft robots
  March 25, 2019

Events 1

• Jun 20, 2017, 2:30pm - 3:30pm Lecture
  
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  Wearable Sensors and Wearable Robots in Rehabilitation Medicine
  Wearable sensors and wearable robots have played an important but independent role in rehabilitation medicine. Over the past few years, we have witnessed the convergence of these two research areas toward the development of wearable technologies aimed to improve the ability of individuals with motor and cognitive impairments to live independently. Dr. Paolo Bonato will... Free and open to public

Multimedia 17

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  Video/Animation
  Robert Wood receives Max Planck-Humboldt Medal
  This photomatic portrays Robert Wood and his team innovating (soft) robotics research with new approaches. Credit: Max Planck Society

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  Video/Animation
  Soft Robotic Arms: Giving Biologists a Delicate, Deep-sea Reach
  What good is a soft robotic hand without a soft robotic arm to move it? Wyss researchers have now created a soft, modular underwater arm that can help marine biologists study hard-to-reach organisms in the deep sea. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University

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  Audio/Podcast
  Disruptive: Soft Robotics for Deep Sea Exploration
  The deep ocean is the least explored environment on Earth, and scientists estimate that many thousands of species are yet to be encountered. Marine researchers depend on tools primarily developed for the military or the oil and gas industry to study and capture undersea organisms. Many of them are extremely fragile, some thousands of years...

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  Video/Animation
  Multi-joint Personalized Soft Exosuit Breaks New Ground
  A multidisciplinary team at Harvard’s Wyss Institute and Harvard SEAS has developed a mobile multi-joint soft exosuit using an automatic tuning strategy that could reduce fatigue in soldiers, firefighters or other rescue workers. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University

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  Video/Animation
  3D-Printed Soft Grippers
  What’s the easiest way to pick up soft-bodied sea creatures? 3D-printed soft robots. Watch as an interdisciplinary team of marine biologists, engineers, and roboticists create custom-made soft grippers on-board the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s R/V Falkor, allowing them to safely sample many types of delicate sea life in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA). Credit: Wyss Institute...

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  Video/Animation
  Origami-Inspired Artificial Muscles
  Artificial muscles could make soft robots safer and stronger. Researchers at the Wyss Institute, Harvard SEAS, and MIT CSAIL have developed a novel design approach for origami-inspired artificial muscles, capable of lifting 1000x its own weight. The muscles are made of a compressible skeleton and air or fluid medium encased in a flexible skin, and...