Mike Zinn promoted to Professor

With 16-years of dedication and experience contributing to the robotics field, Mike Zinn, PhD has been promoted to professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. 

As the principal investigator of the REACH (Robotics Engineering, Applied Control, and Haptics) Lab, Zinn’s research group focuses on the emerging field of human-centered robotics, with a particular focus on human-robot physical interaction. His lab’s contributions lie in fundamental advancements in robotic actuation technology, control system methods, and analytical developments regarding performance and stability limitations. The resulting research has taken place in a variety of application contexts including haptics, human-robot shared control, medical telerobotics, and process control. Some examples of key research contributions include: 

• The development of actuation and control methods that possess characteristics that are suited for robust, safe, and effective physical human-robot collaboration.
• Addressing challenges in merging the competing characteristics required for effective performance including high power, high force, and high dynamic range with those required for inherent safety and dexterity.
• Extending the capabilities of kinesthetic haptic interfaces, allowing for force, power, transparency and rendering ranges that significantly exceed those of state-of-the-art interfaces.
• Expanding research to focus on physical human-robot interaction more broadly including the consideration of semi-autonomous shared control methods, physical interaction constraint modeling, and haptic device and rendering psychophysical considerations.

With over a decade of research and $2.2M of funding, Zinn looks to embark on an effort to enable high dexterity, high force assistive robotics for advanced applications in medicine, manufacturing, and automation. As part of this effort, his lab has initiated collaborative research efforts across campus and with collaborators at other institutions including a NASA-ULI funded collaborative project focused on robotic applications in aerospace manufacturing (UW-Madison, Boeing, NASA).

Outside of fundamental research, student mentoring and training have been a primary focus of Zinn’s lab activities. Zinn has mentored 15 Ph.D. and 6 MS students post tenure. Of those Ph.D. students who have worked in his lab, 10 have graduated since he received tenure. As part of his mentoring efforts, he is a Co-PI on a recently awarded NSF NRT grant (“Integrating Robots into the Future of Work”).

As a pivotal member of our department, we look forward to watching Zinn continue to advance the field of robotics. Zinn’s pivotal experience, dedication to research, and commitment to mentoring students will make him an influential asset for years to come.