Robert Katzschmann

Robert Katzschmann is an Assistant Professor of Robotics at ETH Zurich. Robert earned his Diplom-Ingenieur in 2013 from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2018 from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) at MIT in 2018. Robert worked on robotic manipulation technologies as Applied Scientist at Amazon Robotics and as CTO at Dexai Robotics. In July 2020, Robert founded the Soft Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich to push robots’ abilities for real-life applications by being more compliant and better adapt to their environment to solve challenging robotics tasks. His group develops soft robots whose compliant properties resemble living organisms and advances modeling, control, and learning techniques tailored to the needs of soft robots. His work has appeared in leading academic journals, including Science Robotics, and has been featured in major news outlets, including the New York Times. Robert is a member of the ETH AI Center, the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems (CLS), and the ETH Competence Center for Materials and Processes (MaP). Robert is an Area Chair for Robotics Science and Systems (RSS), a Guest Editor for the International Journal on Robotics Research (IJRR), and a reviewer for leading peer-reviewed journals, including Science and Nature.