Northeastern Team Wins Grand Prize at MassRobotics Competition
A Northeastern University student team won first place at the MassRobotics Form & Function Robotics Challenge, receiving the $10,000 grand prize. They competed against 16 teams from universities across the globe, including the University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Austin, and University of British Columbia. The team included mechanical engineering students Jakub Kowalewski, PhD’28, and Ryo Takei, PhD’28, who were advised by MIE Assistant Professor Jeffrey Lipton and Associate Professor Peter Whitney.
Challenge teams presented their prototypes at the Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston on May 1, 2025. The challenge called for university teams to build a robot that delivered a compelling form factor specific to its tasks while accomplishing a useful function. Robotics industry professionals judged the prototypes.
The Northeastern team developed a new type of compliant and human-safe robot arm that can apply over 1 NM of torque. They harnessed that power to solve a problem that has frustrated many people—baked-on residue that will not come off dishware. This team automated this very tedious task by using the robotic arm to scrub baked-on crust on plates. The arm is versatile and is able to switch from scrubbing dishes to screwing in a light bulb or torquing down a bolt.