Imagine having a continuum soft robotic arm bend around a bunch of grapes or broccoli, adjusting its grip in real time as it lifts the object. Unlike traditional rigid robots that generally aim to avoid contact with the environment as much as possible and stay far away from humans for safety reasons, this arm senses subtle forces, stretching and flexing in ways that mimic more of the compliance of a human hand. Its every motion is calculated to avoid excessive force while achieving the task efficiently. In MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Laboratory for Information and Decisions Systems (LIDS) labs, these seemingly simple movements are the culmination of complex mathematics, careful engineering, and a vision for robots that can safely interact with humans and delicate objects.

Pulkit Agrawal, MIT EECS Associate Professor and CSAIL principal investigator, has received the Toshio Fukuda Young Professional Award from the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) for his work in “robot learning, self-supervised and sim-to-real policy learning, agile locomotion, and dexterous manipulation,” according to the organization.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) and Pegatron Corporation today announced a landmark five-year research partnership aimed at developing the next generation of emotionally and physically intelligent robotic systems. The program, led by CSAIL Director and MIT Professor Daniela Rus and Alan Lin, Corporate Partner Lead at Pegatron, will run from 2026 to 2031 and is designed to redefine the capabilities of robots in human-centered environments.