Michigan Robotics News | Michigan Robotics

Adam Hung, Robotics undergraduate, with a tripedal robot he developed at the Ford Robotics Building.

Five new concentrations for undergraduate robotics major

March 17, 2026

Michigan Robotics undergraduate students can choose from five new concentrations to build depth in perception, dynamics, hardware, human-robot interaction, or full stack systems.

Chad Jenkins speaks with attendees at the Distributed Teaching Collaborative Summer Session at the Ford Motor Company Robotics Building.

Chad Jenkins named ACM Fellow

March 11, 2026

The Association for Computing Machinery has named Chad Jenkins a 2025 ACM Fellow for contributions to robot learning and broadening participation in robotics and AI.

Rendering of a soft microrobot with onboard depth camera, soft actuators, and anchor feet for climbing plant stems.

Soft microrobots to rescue plants from pests receive $1M award

February 25, 2026

The USDA awarded Michigan researchers $1M to develop soft microrobots that climb plant stems to detect pests, led by Xiaonan Huang and Dmitry Berenson.

3D printed concrete art on display during the 2019 Innovation in Concrete Symposium organized by the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and the Civil and Environmental Engineering department.

Using AI to improve 3D printing concrete

February 20, 2026

Professor Yulun Tian is developing an AI-enabled digital twin to monitor and correct robotic 3D concrete printing in real time, backed by a Bold Challenges Initiative award.

The robot has four legs with backward-facing knees. Each leg has three actuators, controlling hip ab/adduction, hip flexion/extension, and knee flexion/extension. Exposed wires link up to the motors. T.R.O.T is emblazoned on the case around the belly of the robot.

Open-source, modular robot for understanding evolution

February 11, 2026

A cost-effective, customizable quadruped could help researchers discover the particular advantages related to the length and segmentation of animal limbs.

upcoming event

Chart with text blocks: Learning Structured Reward Representations Applications Identification Anomaly Detection using mixture-IRL Chapter 4 Learning Reward Machines From Policies Chapter 6 Identifiability Learning Time-Varying Rewards with Priors Chapter 7 Linear Algebraic Characterization of Identifiability in IRL Chapter 5 Learning Reward Machines with Unknown Labels Chapter 8

March 25, 2026 at 12:00 PM

Learning Structured Reward Representations for Reinforcement Learning

PhD Defense, Mohamad Louai Shehab

upcoming event

March 26, 2026 at 4:30 PM

Robotics Pathways and Careers Speaker Series - Winter 2026

Jason Ma - Dyna Robotics

upcoming event

April 9, 2026 at 4:30 PM

Robotics Pathways and Careers Speaker Series - Winter 2026

Kellen Schroeter - Pattern Labs

upcoming event

April 16, 2026 at 4:30 PM

Robotics Pathways and Careers Speaker Series - Winter 2026

Adam Sadilek - AIM Intelligent Machines

Close up of advanced prosthetic hand with a green block grasped between the thumb and index finger, positioning the block at the top of a stack.

robotics community

Cindy Chestek honored with award for miniature engineering

February 6, 2026

Professor Cindy Chestek was recognized for her research advancing brain-machine interfaces and nerve-machine interfaces.

robotics community

Leia Stirling recognized by U-M Industrial & Operations Engineering

February 4, 2026

The College of Engineering named Professor Leia Stirling as the IOE Department Faculty Award recipient for her outstanding contributions through research, teaching and service.

Jason Corso sits in the chair representing the professorship, with Robotics Department chair Dawn Tilbury and Dean Karen Thole behind.

robot learning & foundational models

Jason Corso named Toyota Professor of Artificial Intelligence

January 30, 2026

Jason Corso is recognized for his contributions to computer vision, multimodal learning, and AI for societal impact with this professorship.

A track and field athlete jumps with the assistance of an ankle exoskeleton.

rehabilitation robotics & wearables

U-M, ASICS to launch groundbreaking sport innovation initiative

December 19, 2025

The University of Michigan and ASICS will establish the $25M ASICS x Michigan Sport Innovation Center, a pioneering research effort aimed at advancing human performance and sport science.

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