Meet Andrew Sabelhaus

Dr. Andrew Sabelhaus
Advisor: Carmel Majidi
Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
Bio: Andrew P. Sabelhaus is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Boston University. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in 2019, in collaboration with NASA Ames Research Center's Intelligent Robotics Group. From 2019-2021, he was an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. He was a NASA Space Technology Research Fellow from 2015-2019 and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow from 2012-2015. Andrew’s research takes a control-oriented approach to the locomotion of soft and flexible robots, spanning problems in modeling, feedback, and mechanical design.
Abstract: My research takes a control-oriented approach to the development of soft robots for manipulation and locomotion. During my IC Postdoc Fellowship, I have undertaken four projects on mechanical design and artificial intelligence toward these goals. First, I built a prototype of a soft robot limb with embedded sensors. Using this limb, I then developed two machine-learned dynamics models that predict its motions: one using Gaussian Process Regression, another using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks. Third, I developed an optimization technique that generated motions of this limb based on a desired position. Finally, I developed a feedback control approach that ensures provably-safe operation of the robot’s thermal actuators in the presence of humans and environmental interactions. Together, these results move forward our ability to bring soft robots out of the lab and into practical use.