MAE Seminar: From Mimicking Life to Extending It—The Rise of Super-Mobile Robots

Details

MAE Seminar: From Mimicking Life to Extending It—The Rise of Super-Mobile Robots
Date: January 20, 2026
Time: 12:50 PM Location: MAE-A 303

Dr. Alireza Ramezani
Associate Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Northeastern University

Abstract
With the advent of powerful computers and sophisticated robotic hardware— ranging from humanoids and animanoids to drones—today’s autonomous mobile robots can seamlessly integrate sensing, decision-making, and interaction with complex environments in real time. Bipedal robots can perform parkour, quadrupeds sprint and leap across rugged terrain, and drones race through obstacle courses at speeds that surpass the reflexes of humans, animals, and birds. For decades, we have strived to replicate biology. Now, it is time to move from studying life to extending it—building machines that evolve their own ways of moving through the world. These autonomous systems should not merely navigate their environments but should dexterously reshape themselves the moment they sense that their environment is not traversable. They should quickly morph into new forms and devise new means of movement to make traversal of any obstacles possible, conforming intelligently to the constraints imposed by their surroundings. These machines will unify hardware plasticity with software plasticity—embodying new paradigms of resilient autonomy. Over the past decade, I have devoted my research to the design and control of morphing machines, driven by the vision of creating truly “unstoppable” mobile robots that can navigate in environments where standard systems face the risk of complete immobilization. In this talk, I will discuss how my team has advanced toward realizing this vision. I will present our designs, underlying locomotion models, control, and autonomy strategies, along with video demonstrations from real-world experiments. My talk will also highlight the key challenges, the biological inspirations that shape my designs, and the applications of these systems in areas such as urban logistics, infrastructure monitoring, and planetary exploration.

Biography
Alireza Ramezani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University (NU). He earned his Ph.D. (`14) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, specializing in robotic locomotion under the mentorship of Professor Jessy Grizzle. He received his M.Sc. (`10) in Mechanical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and his B.Sc. (`07) from the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran. For his pioneering designs in robot locomotion, Alireza’s contributions have earned him esteemed accolades, including the prestigious U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)Rising Star Award, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Faculty Program Award, and the NU Impact Award. In a leadership capacity, he led NU teams in NASA’s Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-Changing (BIG) Idea Challenge organized by the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) in 2020 and 2022. In 2022, NU team received NASA’s top honor—the ARTEMIS Award—at the BIG Idea Challenge competition in California forum. He has secured over $8 million in competitive research funding from agencies such as NSF, NASA, and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) during his tenure at NU. His work has garnered significant recognition, with his robotic designs featured prominently in leading scientific journals, including two cover articles in Science Magazine and a research article in Nature. His innovations have also attracted extensive global media attention, covered by more than 200 news outlets since 2018,including IEEE Spectrum, Space Magazine, The Independent, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, National Geographic, CNN, NBC, and Euronews.

Faculty Host: Dr. Amor Menezes