News

2026

Mar. 2026 – Jax will be joining MERGe Lab as a PhD student in the fall. Welcome!
Mar. 2026 – Siqi, Andrew, Chong, and Bill all sent out papers to IROS 2026. Best of luck!
Feb. 2026 – Siqi’s paper on FORTE is published at RA-L with news coverage! We will be presenting at ICRA 2026 in Vienna!
Feb. 2026 – David’s paper on “Seamless Mechanical Programming of Soft-Rigid Robots through Hybrid Epoxy-Acrylate Printing” has been submitted to Science Robotics!
Jan. 2026 – Ava and Hrishi’s paper on “High-Fidelity, Customizable Force Sensing for the Wearable Human-Robot Interface” has been submitted to BioRob 2026!
Jan. 2026 – Lilly and 9 other PIs won internal funding from Good Systems

2025

Dec. 2025 – Lilly has been selected as a Toyota Research Institute Young Faculty Researcher!
Nov. 2025 – Ava and Hrishi’s sensor culminates in the Rooted in Motion dance show!
Nov. 2025 – Lilly was invited to be a keynote speaker at IROS but unfortunately had to decline due to Texas travel restrictions on China.
Oct. 2025 – Lilly gave a talk at the UT San Antonio Mechanical, Aerospace and Industrial Engineering Seminar
Oct. 2025 – Lilly gave a talk at Wesleyan’s College of Design and Engineering Studies Seminar. She also taught a guest lecture on tactile sensing
Sep. 2025 – Benito has joined MERGe Lab as a Masters student. Welcome!
Aug. 2025 – Gu-Cheol’s paper on BiFlex has been accepted to RA-L!
Jun. 2025 – Siqi’s paper on FORTE has been submitted to T-RO and arXiv!
Jun. 2025 – Gu-Cheol’s paper on BiFlex has been accepted to the RSS Workshop on Robot Hardware-Aware Intelligence
May 2025 – Siqi presented FORTE as a Late-Breaking Result at ICRA
May 2025 – Bill presented their previous work on “A Fast and Model Based Approach for Evaluating Task-Competence of Antagonistic Continuum Arms” at the ICRA Workshop on Unconventional Robotics
May 2025 – Andrew, Morris, and Rishit have joined MERGe Lab as undergrad students. Welcome!
Apr. 2025 – Lilly gave a talk at the Texas Regional Robotics Symposium
Mar. 2025 – Gu-Cheol’s paper on BiFlex has been submitted to RA-L and arXiv!
Mar. 2025 – Lilly gave a talk on “Material Matters: Designing Robot Bodies in Dialogue with Computation” at the UT Austin AI + Robotics Research Symposium
Mar. 2025 – Bill has joined MERGe Lab as a PhD student. Welcome!
Jan. 2025 – Lilly’s paper, “Large-Expansion Bi-Layer Auxetics Create Compliant Cellular Motion”, has been accepted to ICRA 2025! See all y’all in Atlanta!

2024

Dec. 2024 – Hrishi, Ava and Joseph have joined MERGe Lab as undergrad students. Welcome!
Sep. 2024 – Lilly has submitted a paper to ICRA 2025 on “Large-Expansion Bi-Layer Auxetics Create Compliant Cellular Motion”
Jun. 2024 – Greg’s paper on “Strong Compliant Grasps Using a Cable-Driven Soft Gripper” has been accepted to IROS 2024!
May 2024 – Lilly won the 2024 IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM) Outstanding Reviewer award!
Apr. 2024 – David, Siqi, Tuo, and Chongxun have joined MERGe Lab as PhD students. Welcome!
Apr. 2024 – Darren and Tanya have joined MERGe Lab as undergrad students. Welcome!
Mar. 2024 – Greg submitted a paper to IROS 2024 on “Strong Compliant Grasps Using a Cable-Driven Soft Gripper”
Jan. 2024 – Annan and Lilly’s paper “Embedded air channels transform soft lattices into sensorized grippers” has been accepted to ICRA 2024! See y’all in Yokohama!
Jan. 2024 – Valerie, Lilly, Jeana and Annan’s paper “Real-Time Grocery Packing by Integrating Vision, Tactile Sensing, and Soft Fingers” has been accepted to Robosoft 2024! See y’all in San Diego!

2023

Dec. 2023 – Greg’s paper on “In-Hand Manipulation With a Simple Belted Parallel-Jaw Gripper” has been published in IEEE RA-L!
Nov. 2023 – This website is online!
Nov. 2023 – Valerie, Lilly, Jeana and Annan submitted a paper to Robosoft 2024 on “Online Packing of Groceries Through Soft Fingers with Integrated Visual-Tactile Sensing”
Sep. 2023 – Annan and Lilly submitted a paper to ICRA 2024 on “Embedded air channels transform soft lattices into sensorized grippers”
Sep. 2023 – Greg submitted a paper to ICRA 2024 on “Strong Compliant Grasps Using a Cable-Driven Soft Gripper”
May 2023 – Lilly has been named a Schmidt Science Fellow. She will spend her postdoc fellowship at the National Institutes of Health.