In this episode, Jack Rasiel speaks with Kostas Bekris, who introduces us to tensegrity robotics: a striking robotic design which straddles the boundary between hard and soft robotics. A structure uses tensegrity if it is made of a number of isolated rigid elements which are held in compression by a network of elements that are in tension. Bekris, an Associate Professor of Computer Science, draws from a diverse set of problems to find innovative new ways to control tensegrity robots.
Kostas Bekris
Kostas Bekris is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He is working in the area of algorithmic robotics, especially on problems related to robot motion planning and coordination. He received his PhD from Rice University in 2008 under the guidance of Lydia Kavraki. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno until 2012. His research has been supported by NSF, NASA, the DoD and DHS, including an NASA Early Career Faculty award.
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