Sustainable Mechatronics

We build computational models of mechanical systems — starting from multibody dynamics and hydraulics — and extend them with data-driven methods for real-time use. Our robotic systems target tough environments: construction sites, forests, waterways, and heavy industry. Physical experiments validate every model. Current work includes real-time fatigue monitoring for mobile machinery, climbing robots for construction, biomimetic underwater robotics, and automated heavy-duty EV charging.

Research areas

• Digital Twins for Machinery — Operational digital twins for non-road mobile machinery, from design through real-time monitoring. Emphasis on physics-based fidelity, virtual fatigue assessment, and lifecycle relevance.
• Multibody Dynamics and Computational Mechanics — Flexible multibody formulations, hydraulic system modeling, real-time simulation, and foundational methods research. The computational backbone of the lab.
• Data-Driven and Physics-Informed AI — Surrogate models, deep learning for mechanical systems, and reinforcement learning for control. Always grounded in physical structure.
• Robotics for Demanding Environments — Sim-to-real transfer and custom robotic platforms for construction, forestry, underwater, and heavy equipment applications. Mechanics-first autonomy.
• Human–Machine Interaction and Human Digital Twins — Modeling human motion, safety, and interaction within machine workspaces.
• Virtual Sensing and Real-Time Estimation — State estimation, surrogate-based virtual sensors, and real-time fatigue monitoring for systems where direct measurement is impractical.

Infrastructure

• Computation — High-performance computing for simulation, surrogate training, and reinforcement learning.
• Simulation platforms — Digital twin and real-time simulation environments, including Exudyn, NVIDIA Omniverse, and Simscape.
• Experimental systems — Robotic platforms and mechanical test setups for validation and sim-to-real transfer.
• Sensing and motion capture — Sensor systems and tracking for experimental validation, virtual sensing research, and human–machine interaction studies.