Sponsor: Orange County Section Jt. Chapter, PE31/IA34
Speaker: Dr. Mitja Trkov

Date: 30 Oct 2025
Time: 05:00 PM PDT to 06:30 PM PDT
Cost:
Location:
Reservations: IEEE
Summary:
Soft robotics has opened new opportunities to design machines that interact safely and adaptively with the physical world. Reconfigurable robots have shown advantages of performing versatile tasks through morphing their structure. A central challenge remains: how can we engineer robots that are not only soft, but also reconfigurable and adapt on-demand for various tasks, environments, and functions? This seminar will discuss the path from modularity to morphing—starting with the design of soft robotic modules as scalable, reconfigurable building blocks, and extending to morphing mechanisms that enable robots to continuously transform their structural geometry and mechanical properties. Key strategies such as module connectivity and resource sharing, variable stiffness control, and structural self-identification schemes will be presented as means of bridging discrete modularity with controlled shape-morphing. Various applications in adaptive locomotion or object manipulation will be highlighted, demonstrating how engineering reconfigurable soft robots can expand the functional and practical boundaries of robotics.

Bio: Dr. Mitja Trkov is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Rowan University, NJ. His research interests include soft robotics, physical human-machine interactions, wearable system, and biomechanics. His particular focus includes using human-centered assistive technologies for fall prevention and development of bio-inspired soft robotic system. Before joining Rowan, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT. Dr. Trkov obtained his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ in 2016. He received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2007. Prior to his graduate studies, he worked as an R&D engineer in the naval industry. Dr. Trkov was a recipient of the Best Student Paper Award at the 2012 and 2015 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM) and the Best Paper Award at the 2022 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE) from MEMS Division.