Alireza Ramezani, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University, has been honored by the Science Foundation for his robotics development.
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WhatsApp Reddit Bird watching is what sparked Alireza Ramezani, a professor of electrical and computer engineering,’s interest in robotic biomimicry over the past decade. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
Alireza Ramezani is an unusual birdwatcher.
“Unlike other people who like to watch birds fly, I like to watch birds run and walk,” said Ramezani, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University.
“When you consider the size of their bodies and the space they have to accommodate all the muscles that are recruited to ultimately enable their locomotion system to successfully stabilise and walk, they’re doing a pretty impressive job,” he says.
He has also observed bats moving about in the cramped cage environment thousands of times over the past decade.
“Robots don’t fly, they hover very calmly in the air,” Ramezani says, “and that’s why I’ve been interested in biomimicry in robots.”
Alireza Ramezani, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University, plans to develop robots that can fly and walk in very tight environments. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
Inspired by scientific observations of these animals, Ramezani built a robotic bat that appeared on the cover of Scientific Robotics in 2017. In 2021, Scientific Robotics again featured his findings as a cover story, this time on replicating bird migration: self-generating propulsion from one place to another. In 2023, Ramezani took his research further and published a paper in Nature on bird locomotion plasticity, or the adaptability of movement.
Ramezani’s work was recently recognized with a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation, which allocated $681,000 to develop a robot that can fly and walk in very confined environments.
“We already have snake robots that can operate in very small, enclosed environments, but they are very slow,” Ramezani said. “They’re not efficient. And when you compare the maneuverability of a snake robot to the quick movements of a bird or the flight capabilities of a bat in a closed environment, there’s no comparison.”
Ramezani said the NSF committee noted that he already has a talented team in place that can deliver the robot within five years. Ramezani’s team, which consists of seven doctoral students, one postdoctoral researcher, and a master’s student and undergraduate student, are helping with the project.
“We have the skill sets we need to achieve our goals,” he says. “We have mechanical engineers with the design skills, electrical engineers with the electronic design skills, and computer engineers and mathematicians with the ability to model these systems.”
Ramezani said he loves interacting with students, conducting experiments with them and sharing the knowledge he has gained over the years developing and testing these types of robots.
He ultimately aims to commercialize the project’s findings in collaboration with key industry players such as the German Space Agency, DLR and Amazon Robotics.
Another goal Ramezani has set for himself is to use this project to promote gender equality within Northeastern University’s robotics program.
“I’ve had the privilege of having some amazing female students in my five years at Northeastern,” he says, “but the reality is that we don’t have many female students in our hands-on robotics lab.”
Ramezani currently has three female students in her lab, but she would like to have an equal number of men and women on her team.
“I think this opportunity should be made more accessible to female students,” he says.
To bring more attention and visibility to robotics at Northeastern, Ramezani plans to emphasize the artistic aspects of the NSF CAREER award.
He is working with artists to bring an art form called Kinetic Sculpture Art to the Boston campus, helping students make connections between art, engineering and robotics through these sculptures.
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