Alireza Ramezani
Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Contact
- a.ramezani@northeastern.edu
- 514 ISEC
360 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
Office
- 617.373.4027
Related Links
Research Focus
Design and development of robots with nontrivial morphologies; Analysis and closed-loop feedback design of nonlinear systems; Robot locomotion (legged & fluidic-based); Robotics-inspired biology
Education
- PhD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2014
Honors & Awards
Two cover articles of Science (Robotics) Magazine
One Science Article in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Science Magazine Altmetric
Research highlights at Nature
Winner of 2022 NASA’s Game Changing Program Award
Winner of 2020 NASA’s Game Changing Program Award
Recipient of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) Faculty Research Program Position (Summer 2022)
Professional Affiliations
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- American Society of Mechanical Engineers(ASME)
- Climbing and Walking Robots Association (CLAWAR)
Research Overview
Design and development of robots with nontrivial morphologies; Analysis and closed-loop feedback design of nonlinear systems; Robot locomotion (legged & fluidic-based); Robotics-inspired biology
SiliconSynapse Lab
At “SiliconSynapse Lab”, we design bio-inspired robots, i.e., we are inspired by biology. Our works reside at the intersection of control theory and robotics, the intersection of theory and experiment. That said, the names ‘’Silicon’’ and ‘’Synapse’’ carried by the lab’s name are the fundamental components of the sensory feedback chains in robots and biological systems.
Selected Research Projects
- Design/Control of Mars Multi-modal Morphing (M4) Rover
- – co-Principal Investigator, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
- Designing Tumbling Snake-inspired Rovers for the Exploration of the Moon’s Shackleton Crater
- – Principal Investigator, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s (STMD) Program
- Design, Flight Control, and Autonomous Navigation of Bioinspired Morphing Micro Aerial Vehicles for Operation in Confined Spaces
- – Principal Investigator, NSF Foundational Research in Robotics (FRR)
- Teaching Aerial Robots to Perch Like a Bat via AI-guided Design and Control
- – co-Principal Investigator, NSF National Robotics Initiative
- SCOUT and DOGHOUSE
- – Principal Investigator and supervisor of NU team, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development Program
Department Research Areas
Selected Publications
- E. Sihite, A. Ramezani, ”Enforcing nonholonomic constraints in Aerobat, a roosting flapping wing model,” Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Jeju Island, Republic of Korea, December 8-11, 2020.
- E. Sihite, P. Kelly, A. Ramezani, ”Computational Structure Design of a Bio-inspired Armwing Mechanism,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2020. Also accepted in IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Las Vegas, NV, October 25-29, 2020
- P. Dangol, A. Ramezani, N. Jalili, ”Performance satisfaction in Midget, a thruster-assisted bipedal robot,” American Control Conference (ACC), Denver, CO, July 1-3, 2020.
- A. Ramezani, ”Towards flapping flight upside-down landing through differential manipulation of inertial dynamics,” Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Paris, France, May 31 to June 4, 2020.
- P. Dangol, A. Ramezani, ”Performance and Robustness Satisfaction in a Thruster-assisted Legged Robot,” International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), Berlin, Germany, July 12-17, 2020.
- A. C. B. de Oliveira, A. Ramezani, ”Thruster-assisted Center Manifold Shaping in Bipedal Legged Locomotion,” International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), Boston, MA, July 6-10, 2020.
- A. Ramezani, S.U. Ahmed, J.E. Hoff, S.J. Chung, S. Hutchinson, Describing aerial locomotion of an Articulated MAV with Stable Periodic Orbits, Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems: The 6th Int’l. Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, 2017, 394-405
- S.U. Ahmed, A. Ramezani, S.J. Chung, S. Hutchinson, From Rousettus Aegyptiacus Landing to Robotic Landing: Regulation of CG-CP Distance Using a Nonlinear Closed-Loop Feedback, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2017, 3560-3567
- A. Ramezani, S.J. Chung, S. Hutchinson, A Biomimetic Robotic Platform to Study Flight Specializations of Bats, Science (Robotics-AAAS), 2(3), 2017
- J.E. Hoff, A. Ramezani, S.J. Chung, S. Hutchinson, Synergistic Design of a Bio-Inspired Micro Aerial Vehicle with Articulated Wings, Robotics Science and Systems Conference (RSS), 2016
- A. Ramezani, X. Shi, S.J. Chung, S. Hutchinson, Bat Bot (B2), a Biologically Inspired Flying Machine, Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2016, 3219-3226
- A. Ramezani, J. Hurst, K.A. Hamed, J.W. Grizzle, Performance Analysis and Feedback Control of Atrias, a 3D Bipedal Robot, ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems Measurement and Control, 136(2), 2014, 21012
- H.W. Park, A. Ramezani, J.W. Grizzle, A Finite State Machine for Accommodating Unexpected Large Ground Height Variations in Bipedal Robot Walking, IEEE Transactions on Robotics,29(2), 2013, 331-345
Sep 15, 2023
Announcing Fall 2023 PEAK Experiences Awardees
Several engineering students and science students mentored by COE faculty are recipients of Northeastern’s Fall 2023 PEAK Experiences Awards. Projects this fall are tackling a range of topics and modes with students developing an autobiographical zine, studying the development of amphibian limbs, building better rocket parts, and more. BASE CAMP AWARDS Farhad Ibrahimzade COE’26 & […]
Sep 08, 2023
Global Strategic Partnership Forged to Advance Robotic Technology
ECE Assistant Professor Alireza Ramezani is collaborating on a $3M project with Caltech as part of a cross-disciplinary collaboration focused on the design and control of multi-modal robots.
Aug 03, 2023
Morphing robot from Northeastern University could someday walk, fly and drive over alien planets
The Morphobot (M4), designed by a team of researchers led by ECE Assistant Professor Alireza Ramezani, was featured in the Space.com article “Morphing robot from Northeastern University could someday walk, fly and drive over alien planets.”
Jul 05, 2023
This Robot Has All the Moves—Eight, to be Precise
The Morphobot (M4), designed by a team of researchers led by ECE Assistant Professor Alireza Ramezani, was featured in the IEEE Spectrum article “This Robot Has All the Moves—Eight, to be Precise.”
Jul 03, 2023
Finding Inspiration from Nature to Create the Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot (M4)
ECE Assistant Professor Alireza Ramezani’s research on “Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot (M4) with appendage repurposing for locomotion plasticity enhancement” was published in Nature Communications.
Jul 03, 2023
The future of space exploration is a transforming, animal-like robot, scientists say
The multi-modal mobility morphobot (M4), designed by a team of researchers led by ECE Assistant Professor Alireza Ramezani, was featured in articles by ABC News, Science, Independent, Interesting Engineering, ZME Science, Mirage News, BollyInside, The Verge, Pasadena Now, Tech Explorist, NewsBytes, HT Tech, Ubergizmo, Autoevolution, Gearrice, TechTimes, New Scientist, Germany’s N-TV, and on WHDH.
Jul 03, 2023
This groundbreaking, animal-inspired robot rolls, crawls and flies into the future of robotics
The multi-modal mobility morphobot (M4), designed by a team of researchers led by ECE Assistant Professor Alireza Ramezani, is a shape-shifting robot with eight modes of mobility inspired by animals, capable of seamlessly transitioning between crawling, flying, rotating, and using thrusters, with potential applications in space exploration, package delivery, and search and rescue operations.
Apr 27, 2023
Announcing Summer 2023 PEAK Experiences Awardees
Several engineering students and science students mentored by COE faculty are recipients of Northeastern’s Summer 2023 PEAK Experiences Awards. They will be pursuing a diverse set of projects, including a study of a pathogen that haunts hospitals, an examination of segregationist rhetoric in Boston newspapers, and an analysis of creativity in music. Base Camp Awardees […]
Feb 24, 2023
US Students’ ‘Big Idea’ Could Help NASA Explore the Moon
A Northeastern University student team, who won the 2022 NASA BIG IDEA Competition for their COBRA robot, was featured in the VOA News article “US Students’ ‘Big Idea’ Could Help NASA Explore the Moon.”
Feb 16, 2023
Rovers Are So Yesterday. It’s Time to Send a Snakebot to Space
A Northeastern University student team, who won the 2022 NASA BIG IDEA Competition, was featured in the Wired article “Rovers Are So Yesterday. It’s Time to Send a Snakebot to Space.”