ardian@ini.uzh.ch

Agile Soft Robotics through Physical AI

Connect soft robotics with mechanical intelligence and bioinspired control strategy to deliver hybrid solutions that ultimately surpass animal-level agility.

Rather than treating morphology as passive hardware, our work asks how bodies can compute, stabilise, absorb impact, exploit contact, and reduce computational burden of control.

Robots will leverage deep-time-validated Physical AI by utilising intrinsic dynamics to unlock emergent control-efficient and contact-rich movement capabilities in high-energy manoeuvres in swimming, rapid climbing, and landing.

Biosketch    Prof. Dr. Ardian Jusufi     University of Zurich     (ardian@ini.uzh.ch)

  • PhD | University of California at Berkeley, under supervision of Prof. Robert Full at the CiBER center.
  • Postdocs | University of Cambridge Queens’ College.  MicroRobotics Lab at Harvard University with Prof. Robert Wood.
  • Lecturer [Assist. Prof.] | Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney from 2016.
  • Group Leader [Assoc. Prof.] | Independent Max Planck Research Group Leader at MPI for Intelligent Systems through 2023. Founded Soft Kinetic Group at Engineering Sciences Department at the Swiss Federal Labs for Materials Science and Technology in 2022.
  • Affiliated Group Leader | ETH Center for Learning Systems, and University of Zurich Institute for NeuroInformatics INI, current.
  • Associate Professor |  Macquarie University Sydney since 2022.
  • Grants | Swiss NSF (two currently active) and from the Cyber Valley Research Fund, and the Max Planck Society.

Prof. Dr. Ardian Jusufi | Institute for NeuroInformatics University of Zurich 

Head of Soft Kinetic Group, Engineering Sciences Department | Swiss Federal Labs for Materials Science and Technology Empa

formerly Independent Max Planck Research Group Leader at the MPI for Intelligent Systems
and Associate Faculty Member at ETH Center for Learning Systems

Hon. Associate Professor | Macquarie University

Prof. Dr. Ardian Jusufi   Institute for NeuroInformatics, University of Zurich; Engineering Sci. Dept., Swiss Federal Labs Mat. Sci. Technology; Hon. Assoc. Prof., Macquarie University

➡️  Empa: https://www.empa.ch/web/juar/
➡️  Soft Kinetic: https://www.empa.ch/web/soft-kinetic/

Prof. Dr. Jusufi moderated Panel Discussion on “Soft Robotics & AI” involving Profs. Oliver Brock, Koh Hosoda, and other leaders.

Ardian also chaired a Soft Robotics Symposium at PPS38 that was attended by Profs. Rob Shepherd, Yong Lae Park, Caecilia Laschi, among others.

He has chaired sessions in several conferences including IEEE RoboSoft, Robotics Science and Systems, AMAM, as well as IEEE ICRA workshop presentations.

We have open positions!  Please contact the PI: ardian.jusufi@uzh.ch