Robot Form and Function Lab

What inspires robot design? Between the standard and the obscure lies a realm of practical, yet unconventional morphologies. The Unconventional Robotics Workshop is back for 2026! 🤖 tinyurl.com/UR-ICRA2026 Attending ICRA? Submit your abstracts here! tinyurl.com/UR-Abstracts

#UBSEAS researchers are developing tiny affective robots that can display happy, sad, surprised, angry and neutral emotional expressions in response to human tactile handling. Learn more about the purpose of the tiny bot here: ubseas.info/4eJrR2v #UBuffalo #UBMAE #UBCSE

Happy #NationalRoboticsWeek !! To celebrate, check out some of the miniature robots that have been developed in #UBSEAS 🤖 🤖 From mimicking the powerful movements of a snapping shrimp to leveraging size to navigate challenging terrain, these small bots can have big impacts!

Unconventional robots enable new capabilities—soft robots for human interaction, modular robots for industry, and exploratory robots for extreme environments.
Let’s discuss novel mechanisms & control strategies at #ICRA2025! #UnconventionalRobotsWorkshop

Meet Our Amazing Workshop Speakers at ICRA 2025! We're bringing together top researchers in robotics, including:
✅ Dr. Radhika Nagpal
✅ Dr. Josie Hughes
✅ Dr. Kris Dorsey ✅ Dr. Yong-Lae Park 
✅ Dr. Cynthia Sung & more!
Join us at #ICRA2025 for an inspiring discussion!

Meet Our Amazing Workshop Speakers at #ICRA2025  We're bringing together top researchers in robotics, including: 
✅ Dr. Elizabeth Farrell Helbling
✅ Dr. Mike Tolley
✅ Dr. Aimy Wissa & more!
 #UnconventionalRobotsWorkshop

Call for Abstracts – Unconventional Robots Workshop at ICRA 2025! 📢 We invite 2-page extended abstracts on topics like: 🔹Underactuation 🔹Soft robotics 🔹Bioinspiration 🔹Simulation/control 🔹Haptics 🗓️ Submit now: tinyurl.com/UR-ICRA2025 #ICRA2025 #UnconventionalRobotsWorkshop

Our newest jumping microrobot work looks at how springs and actuators are tuned relative to the geometry of torque reversal latches. Combinations of springs, latches, and actuation can result in controllable outputs of a small, 350 mg jumping microrobot. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…

Our recent work on a highly mobile millirobot is now available in IEEE RA-L on early access (ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10465…) Lead by @ShashwatRa, the Buffalo Byte is an autonomous millirobot that is capable of moving on natural terrain, bringing small robots out of the lab!

Our lab got to show off some of our robots at #EngineersWeek at the @buffaloscience

We are looking forward to sharing our work on jumping microrobots at #ICRA2024. Led by @ShashwatRa, we collaborated with @CMU_ZoomLab to bring small robots to new heights.

Congratulations to Aniket who successfully defended his MS thesis this December. Aniket will be continuing on as a PhD student at UB, co-advised in the Robot Form and Function Lab

Congratulations again @innobrie!

Congratulations to Yaswanth for successfully defending his MS thesis work. Some real interdisciplinary engineering was shown! Congratulations Yaswanth!

Our CSE summer student from @UBSTEM, Megdess, did truly outstanding at her poster and amazing work all summer!

Congratulations to @ShashwatRa for successfully defending his MS thesis. Truly impressive robot engineering! We wish you all the best as you start your PhD with the @CMU_ZoomLab

Our new collaborative pub integrates experimental & math modeling to reveal extraordinary latch dynamics & ultrafast spring propulsion of NC snapping shrimp @J_Exp_Biol @DukeMarineLab @sbergbreiter @RFFL_UB Sarah Longo @cox_zanne & Ben Schelling journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/22…

Trap-jaw ants could tear themselves apart when they fire off their mandibles but @patek_lab @RFFL_UB @dukebiology show how the ants push and pull the mandibles using energy stored in a tendon and their exoskeleton to drive the jaws in a perfect arc journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/22…

Thank you @NicolettaML and @J_Exp_Biol for these great features about our latest J. Experimental Biology paper with @RFFL_UB @sbergbreiter @Fishguy_FHL @ChifromT journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/22… livescience.com/trap-jaw-ants-…