Current members

Affiliations

Dr. Dipankar Bhattacharya is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, where he works on soft reconfigurable exoskeletons for muscle impairment rehabilitation . He specialises in advanced robotic systems that combine learning algorithms with physics-based modelling to achieve precise and robust control. He received his PhD in Mechatronics Engineering from the University of Auckland in 2021. His research has been published in leading journals including IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics , IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology , Mechanism and Machine Theory , and Soft Robotics , and he received the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Robotic Intelligence Technology and Applications (RiTA 2017) .

Before joining Imperial, he was a Senior Research Engineer at the Center for Transformative Garment Production (TransGP) and a Visiting Research Associate at the University of Hong Kong, where he developed a robotic fabric-flattening policy that transforms wrinkled fabrics into target shapes. The approach combines imitation learning, visual servoing, and a mesh-based Transformer model to achieve accurate dual-arm fabric alignment across diverse materials.

He previously held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, focusing on modelling, control, and optimisation of cable-driven robotic systems (including cable-driven bionic arms, superlimbs, and inflatable growing robots) and bio-inspired soft robotics.

His research centres on robotic manipulation, soft robotics, cable-driven parallel robots, and intelligent control systems, with the goal of bridging model-based control and data-driven learning for robots operating in deformable and uncertain environments.

Affiliations

Yukun conducts experiments to develop soft origami inspired endoscopic capsules that move both forward and backwards under the peristaltic waves just by changing the shape of the capsule. This allows us to collect more data from potentially anomalous intestine tissue. Yukun won the Amazon-Imperial Robotics Forum award for the outstanding PhD research in robotics in 2023.

Affiliations

Parvathi studies the role of fingertip morphology in texture classification in her PhD. She received her Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering with First Class Honours from Government Engineering College Thrissur, India, being the Institute and District topper. Thereafter she did her research internship at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. She did her Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Palakkad, for which she was awarded the ISTE-GSFC National Award for Best thesis. She is also the recipient of National Bal Shree honour in the field of Creative Scientific Innovations organised by National Bal Bhavan, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India and NTSE (National Talent Search Exam) Scholarship, conducted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), Government of India.

Affiliations

Chris graduated in 2023 with a first-class honour from the Design Engineering MEng course at Imperial College London. He is now working in Morph lab designing new feet for mountain climbing quadruped robots. Working with Jonah, they have taken inspiration from Alpine Ibex and made hoof-inspired feet which work with the environment and take advantage of the natural features of the mountainous terrain without any electronics or control. During their first year he won UK Young Engineer and during the course of university, he found a love in robotics and created ROPHIO for his Master’s project, an affordable and novel modular self-reconfigurable swarm robot for swarm software development.

Affiliations

Peiyu graduated from China University of Petroleum (Beijing) in 2021 with a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Design, Manufacturing, and Automation.From 2021 to 2024, he pursued and obtained a Master's degree in Mechanical Design and Theory from Beijing Jiaotong University, and a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Birmingham. He began his PhD studies at the Dyson School of Design Engineering in October 2024. His research primarily focuses on the design, modeling, and control of soft gripper with mechanical intelligence. The goal of this research is to enhance the gripping ability and stability of soft grippers, reduce the complexity of control systems, and improve environmental perception ability through the design of the soft gripper's mechanical structure.

Affiliations

Tonghui graduated from Shandong University in 2022 with Outstanding Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, earning First Class Honours and the title of Mechanical Future Star. In 2023, he pursued and awarded Master's degree in Human and Biological Robotics at Imperial College London. Subsequently, he commenced his Design Engineering Ph.D. studies in December 2023 at the Dyson School of Design Engineering, generously supported by a full scholarship. His research ambitiously bridges soft robotic technology with percussion tomography. By focusing on this synergy, he aims to revolutionize non-invasive imaging techniques, greatly enhancing our ability to understand and visualize human tissues. This work not only underscores the potential of interdisciplinary approaches but also promises significant advancements in medical diagnostics and treatment planning.

Affiliations

Xiao Jin is a PhD student in Design Engineering at Imperial College London. His research focuses on vibration-based sensing and how physical structures can be used to interpret signals from the environment.

He studies how mechanical structures such as flexible beams, springs, and lattice systems respond to vibrations generated by interactions with their surroundings. In particular, he explores how these structural dynamics can be used as a form of physical reservoir computing (PRC), where the mechanical behaviour of a structure naturally encodes information about environmental conditions.

His earlier work investigated terrain recognition through vibration signals produced by ground–wheel interactions, with potential applications in mobile robots and planetary exploration platforms. Building on this foundation, his current research explores vibration sensing in fluid environments. By designing compliant mechanical structures inspired by natural sensing systems, he aims to develop underwater sensors capable of detecting subtle flow disturbances and environmental signals.