Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart site

In order to support people in therapy or in everyday life in the future, machines will have to be capable of feeling and gently touching their human counterparts. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker and her team at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart are currently developing the technology required for this objective and are already testing sensitive robots for initial applications.

Geckos' crash landing abilities may inspire new techniques for robot mobility

Periodic pattern consisting of magnons is formed at room temperature

A chip-based technology that modulates intensive sound pressure profiles with high resolution opens up new possibilities for ultrasound therapy

Scientists develop a new spectroscopic-microscope

In order to support people in therapy or in everyday life in the future, machines will have to be capable of feeling and gently touching their human counterparts. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker and her team at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart are currently developing the technology required for this objective and are already testing sensitive robots for initial applications.

Ultrasound can be used manipulate tiny particles and even to arrange them in any desired patterns by using acoustic holography. This method has been developed by Peer Fischer’s team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart. The physicists are already working on medical applications.

Some medical treatments would be more efficient if medication could be transported via a tiny robot directly to the diseased area. Peer Fischer and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart are developing microswimmers and nanoswimmers that are expected to one day make this possible.

Gastroscopy usually requires patients to swallow an endoscope tube. Although camera-carrying capsules are also suitable for the task, it is still not possible to control them. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart plan to change all that. And their tiny capsule-shaped robots can do a lot more than merely take snapshots of the stomach’s interior.

Computers today serve as a jukebox, movie archive and photo album, and must thus provide fast access to ever-larger amounts of data. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart and the Halle-based Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics are paving the way for magnetic storage materials that make this possible, cleverly taking advantage of the unique laws of the nanoworld.

The impressive locomotion and manipulation capabilities of spiders have inspired many a roboticist to build machines mimicking these fascinating animals. A team of scientists at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart and the University of Colorado Boulder has developed highly advanced joints inspired by spiders' legs and used them to build lightweight and delicate robots that raise the bar in the field of bioinspired robotics. 

At the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart we develop a robot that looks and moves like a jellyfish, one of the world’s most common marine animals: the “jellyfishbot”. The untethered robot features an umbrella-shaped bell and trailing tentacles just like its natural model. The research holds great potential when investigating the impact of environmental changes on the oceans’ ecosystems. Another vision for the jellyfishbot is to revolutionize the treatment of cancer.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart developed specially coated nanometer-sized robots that could be moved actively through dense tissue like the vitreous of the eye. So far, the transport of such nano-vehicles has only been demonstrated in model systems or biological fluids, but not in real tissue. Our work constitutes one step further towards nanorobots becoming minimally-invasive tools for precisely delivering medicine to where it is needed.

Microrobots to the rescue! Miniature robots the size of around a single cell have the prospect of transforming medical therapy, as they are able to access enclosed spaces, making previously inaccessible body parts accessible, allowing for a minimally invasive diagnosis and treatment. However, it is difficult to construct a microrobot. Questions are: can the researchers create medical robots that decide themselves when to take action inside the body? How can they build such an autonomous, intelligent system at the sub-millimeter scale? A great challenge, that the scientists pursue with passion.

An animal's running gait is dynamic, efficient, elegant, and adaptive. We see locomotion in animals as an orchestrated interplay of the locomotion apparatus, interacting with its environment. The Dynamic Locomotion Group at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart develops novel legged robots to decipher aspects of biomechanics and neuromuscular control of legged locomotion in animals, and to understand general principles of locomotion.