Wenzhong Yan, Ph.D. | Mechanical intelligence for soft robots

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Welcome to my homepage! I am Wenzhong Yan (颜文忠), currently a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA ECE, working with Ankur Mehta and Jonathan Hopkins. My long-term research goal is to create soft robotic systems that can match the remarkable abilities of biological systems in terms of structural adaptability, physical robustness, and power autonomy. Toward this goal, I leverage Mechanical Intelligence (MI) — embedding sensing, control, actuation, and power into mechanical structures of robotic bodies. I will achieve this MI-based strategy through advanced digital manufacturing methods (e.g., origami-inspired methods and 3D printing).

I recently earned my Ph.D. degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from UCLA in June 2023. My research interests broadly include origami and soft robotics, mechanical intelligence, structural instability, computational fabrication, smart materials and structures, and wearable devices.

I am always interested in research collaborations, broadly in the fields of robotics, machine and mechanism design, and advanced manufacturing. Feel free to email me.

News

12/2024 Excited to present my work on Adaptive Soft Robots at ISRR. See you in Long Beach from December 8 to 12.
11/2024 I'll be in Boston from Dec 3 to Dec 7 for MRS 2024. Excited to see y'all!
11/2024 Thrilled to serve on the RSS Pioneers 2025 Organizing Committee. See you in Los Angeles next summer!
10/2024 Our paper, entitled 'A self-regenerative heat pump based on a dual-functional relaxor ferroelectric polymer', has been published online in Science!
09/2024 Our work, entitled 'Self-Deployable, Adaptive Soft Robots Based on Contracting-Cord Particle Jamming', is accepted to the International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR). See you soon in Long Beach this December.
08/2024 Enjoyed sharing my work at Rice. Thanks Dan for the invitation and showing me the awesome PI lab!
08/2024 Thrilled to give an invited talk at the Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute. Thanks Ray for hosting me!
07/2024 Our paper, entitled 'Self-deployable Contracting-cord Metamaterials with Tunable Mechanical Properties,' is published by Materials Horizons and featured on Back Cover. See preprint here.
05/2024 Thanks Vickie and Nick for inviting me to attend the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mechanical Intelligence!
05/2024 Excited to be selected as a CPS Rising Star. Thank you to the UVA Link Lab.
04/2024 Honored to be selected as an RSS pioneer.
04/2024 Have a wonderful time at RoboSoft 2024 in San Diego.
03/2024 Glad to visit Glaucio Paulino and Aimy Wissa at Princeton University.
03/2024 Enjoy visiting the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory
03/2024 Thrilled to have an invited talk at the Harvard Bertoldi's Group!
02/2024 Thank you to the UConn Electrical and Computer Engineering for hosting me for a seminar talk!
02/2024 Thank you to the UMass Mechanical and Industrial Engineering for hosting me for a seminar talk!
02/2024 Thrilled to receive the 2024 "Edward K. Rice Outstanding Doctoral Student Award" from UCLA Samueli School of Engineering.
01/2024 I will be at Robotics GRC from Jan. 14 to 19 at Ventura, CA
11/2023 Meet lots of (new) friends at my first ever Materials Research Society Fall Meeting & Exhibit in Boston
11/2023 So much fun to visit Creative Machine Lab and chat with Hod
10/2023 First time at the Annual Technical Meeting of Society of Engineering Science, Minneapolis
10/2023 Excited to attend IROS in Detroit
08/2023 Enjoy visiting Bertoldi's Group at Harvard and discussing so many cool projects
08/2023 Glad to present at IDETC-CIE 2023 in Boston
08/2023 A wonderful panel discussion on 'Progress on Origami Engineering' at iCANX platform
06/2023 Officially become Dr. Yan with my thesis, entitled 'Printable Mechanical Autonomy'
06/2023 I am honored to have been invited as a speaker on 'Mechanical Intelligence-Enabled Autonomous Compliant Robots' at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, UCLA
05/2023 Present (online) my work at the OrigaBot workshop, ICRA
04/2023 I am pleased to visit MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory
04/2023 Honored to give a talk at UPenn GRASP and have a wonderful day talking with faculty members and students
03/2023 Our work, entitled 'Origami-based integration of robots that sense, decide, and respond' is published in Nature Communications and featured by the editor in Soft Robotics: Sensing, Actuation, and Integration.
09/2022 Proud to be selected as a Rising Star of the Southern California Robotics Symposium
08/2022 Present at the Gordon Research Conference on Robotics in Ventura, CA
07/2022 Thrilled to attend Fast Movement Symposium and have great suggestions from Rob, Sangbae, and Elliot on my jumping robots
07/2022 So much fun to visit brand-new labs of Boyuan and Xiaoyue at Duke
06/2022 Honor to receive Harry M. Showman prize from UCLA Samueli School of Engineering
05/2022 Pleased to showcase 'One Dollar Robots' at the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts in Long Beach, CA
05/2022 First in-person conference after covid and excited to receive the Best Presentation Award at the Soft Robotics workshop, ICRA, Philadelphia
04/2022 I am delighted to attend (online) the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Soft Robotics in Edinburgh, U.K.
04/2021 Present (online) 'Origami Logic Gates for Printable Robots' at IROS, Prague, Czech Republic
10/2020 Feel very proud of my first undergraduate mentee, Angela Gao, at UCLA
10/2019 Prof. Daniela Rus visits our lab, and I present my work on origami robots and have an inspiring discussion
05/2019 Show Mechanical Logic at the Annual Research Review of UCLA ECE department
06/2018 I am delighted to present 'Fabrication-aware Design for Furniture with Planar Pieces' at the ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication in Boston