Overview

UW’s Robotics and Controls researchers are leaders in the areas of surgical and bio-robotics, haptics, smart cities, and network control systems. They collaborate with and hold secondary appointments in computer science and engineering, bioengineering, and the UW Medical Center, and are active participants in research centers such as the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering.

Topics

Surgical and Bio-Robotics:

Tactile sensing, biomechanics, biomedical modeling and surgical planning.
Faculty: Blake Hannaford, Howard Jay Chizeck, Samuel Burden

Smart Cities:

Cloud-based systems, network of sensors, RFIDs, spectrum development and testing.
Faculty: Lillian Ratliff, Linda Bushnell, Baosen Zhang, Maryam Faze l, Hanneneh Hajishirzi

Haptics:

Telerobotics, virtual reality, mobile device interface and remote surgery.
Faculty: Blake Hannaford, Howard Jay Chizeck

Network Control Systems:

Communication networks, sensors, command controllers, drones, developing-world applications.
Faculty: Radha Poovendran, Linda Bushnell

Latest News

WiBotic raises $5.7M to boost wireless systems for charging up robots and drones

WiBotic is a UW ECE spin-off company co-founded by Professor Joshua Smith and alum, Ben Waters.

UW ECE faculty and students respond to COVID-19

UW ECE faculty and students are leading collaborative research aimed at reducing impacts of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Projects range from assisting with diagnostics, testing and tracking, to engineering ventilator technology, to developing targeted treatments for the disease.

UW ECE postdoctoral research scholar and PhD student accept tenure-track assistant professorships

Shana Moothedath and Yuanyuan Shi have accepted tenure-track assistant professorship positions in the ECE departments of Iowa State University and the University of California San Diego starting in 2021.

UW-Medtronic collaboration accelerates research into deep brain stimulation treatment for essential tremor, Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders

UW ECE researchers funded by the Center for Neurotechnology are partnering with Medtronic to impact a wide range of medical conditions.

ECE alum Junyi Zhu integrates electronics onto physical prototypes at MIT with "CurveBoards"

In place of flat “breadboards”, 3D-printed CurveBoards enable easier testing of circuit design on electronics products.

UW ECE faculty and alumni receive NSF CAREER awards

UW ECE Assistant Professor Baosen Zhang and ECE alums Andrew Clark and Subhanshu Gupta all won a 2020 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award.

Robotics and Controls