Dr Krishna Manaswi Digumarti
Faculty of Engineering,
School of Electrical Engineering & Robotics
Biography
Dr. Krishna Manaswi Digumarti is a lecturer in the school of electrical engineering and robotics at QUT. He works with the QUT Centre of Robotics.Dr. Digumarti's research is in the multi-disciplinary domain of soft robotics. In the past 10 years, he has worked on applications in automated grasping, locomotion, wearables and healthcare. His work resulted in the successful development of multiple devices, actuators, sensors, new materials, fabrication techniques, characterisation methods and test benches.
Technologies related to shape morphing, variable stiffness, computational design and materials characterisation are of particular interest to Dr. Digumarti. His work pushes the boundaries of sensing and actuation for robots that are dynamically interacting with the outside world as well as changing their own physical configuration.
In his most recent appointment, prior to joining QUT, Dr. Digumarti worked as a post-doctoral researcher at EPFL, Switzerland. His appointment was jointly with the Smart Transducers Lab and the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems. He worked on the European Union's MERGING project aimed at automating the handling of flexible and fragile materials like textiles, food packaging and technical fibre. His work resulted in the filing of a patent.
Dr. Digumarti received his PhD in robotics and autonomous systems from the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England, UK, in 2019. His work was with SoftLab Bristol, a part of the Bristol Robotics Lab, the largest multi-disciplinary robotics research center in the UK. For his thesis he developed novel mechanisms for shape changing robots inspired from the Euglenoid family of microorganisms. Prior to that, he received a master's in robotics, systems and control from ETH Zurich in 2014. His thesis on optimizing the design of legged robots was jointly with the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETH as Disney Research Zurich. He graduated with a bachelor's in mechanical engineering with honours from the Indian Insititute of Technology Hyderabad in 2012.
Dr. Digumarti presented his work at the top conference and best journals of robotics and invented a new technology for grasping. His research featured on the BBC's science show, Click (episode: 50 shapes of goo), with a worldwide audience of 380 million households. It also appeared on Channel 4, and in the French media. He was invited to present his shape changing robots to biologists of the Euglenoid International Network in 2020.
Personal details
Positions
- Lecturer
Faculty of Engineering,
School of Electrical Engineering & Robotics
Keywords
Soft Robotics, Sensors, Soft actuators, Manipulation, Graspoing, Prosthesis, Micro fabrication
Research field
Control engineering, mechatronics and robotics, Electronics, sensors and digital hardware, Mechanical engineering
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2020
Qualifications
- PhD in Robotics and Autonomous Systems (Bristol University)
Teaching
EGH437 Robot Anatomy, Semester 1, 2023
ENN581 Robot Motion, Control and Planning, Semester 2, 2023
Publications
- Aksoy, B., Digumarti, K. & Shea, H. (2024). Soft Monolithic Shielded Sensors to Measure Shear and Normal Forces for Local Slip Detection. Advanced Materials Technologies, 9(16). https://eprints.qut.edu.au/248591
- Aksoy, B., Hao, Y., Grasso, G., Digumarti, K., Cacucciolo, V. & Shea, H. (2022). Shielded soft force sensors. Nature Communications, 13. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/237127
- Wang, Y., Wu, C., Li, X., Li, Y., Gao, X., Digumarti, K. & Cao, C. (2023). Folding for Stiffening: A Novel Corrugated Electro-Adhesive Clutch. Proceedings of the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO). https://eprints.qut.edu.au/244167
- Digumarti, K., Cacucciolo, V. & Shea, H. (2021). Dexterous textile manipulation using electroadhesive fingers. Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2021), 6104–6109. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/237504
- Judd, E., Aksoy, B., Digumarti, K., Floreano, D. & Shea, H. (2022). Slip Anticipation for Grasping Deformable Objects Using a Soft Force Sensor. Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 10003–10008. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/237526
- Sun, Y., Digumarti, K., Phan, H., Aloui, O. & Floreano, D. (2022). Electro-Adhesive Tubular Clutch for Variable-Stiffness Robots. Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 9628–9634. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/237525
- Judd, E., Digumarti, K., Rossiter, J. & Hauser, H. (2020). NeatSkin: A Discrete Impedance Tomography Skin Sensor. Proceedings of the 2020 3rd IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft 2020), 33–38. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/237134
- Digumarti, K., Conn, A. & Rossiter, J. (2019). Pellicular Morphing Surfaces for Soft Robots. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 4(3), 2304–2309. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/237130
- Rossiter, J., Digumarti, K., Trimmer, B. & Conn, A. (2019). Quantifying Dynamic Shapes in Soft Morphologies. Soft Robotics, 6(6), 733–744. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/237132
- Simons, M., Digumarti, K., Conn, A. & Rossiter, J. (2019). Tiled auxetic cylinders for soft robots. Proceedings of the 2019 2nd IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), 62–67. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/237505
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Krishna Manaswi, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).
Supervision
Current supervisions
- Development of a Continuum Arm Aerial Manipulation System (CAAMS)
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Felipe Gonzalez, Dr Fernando Vanegas Alvarez
Supervision topics
The supervisions listed above are only a selection.