Robotics Faculty Highlight Research at 50th Mechanisms and Robotics Conference
The 50th Mechanisms and Robotics Conference, held August 23–26 in Houston, Texas,
brought together researchers in mechanisms, robotics, and engineering design as part
of the 2026 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers
and Information in Engineering Conference (ASME IDETC-CIE).
Stony Brook University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering was well represented at the milestone conference. Professors Nilanjan Chakraborty, Shikui Chen, Jeff Ge, Anurag Purwar, and William Stewart attended with several of their students, with faculty taking on leadership and invited-speaker roles and students presenting their research.
Professor Nilanjan Chakraborty served as Conference Chair for the 50th Mechanisms and Robotics Conference, having previously served as Program Chair for the 2025 conference. He was also elected this year to a five-year term as a member of the ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Committee. Professor Anurag Purwar, who currently serves as the committee’s Secretary, will become Chair of the ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Committee on October 1st.
For Purwar, the milestone conference also marked more than two decades of involvement with the mechanisms and robotics community.
“I have been attending the ASME Mechanisms and Robotics (MR) conference since 2003 back when I was a PhD student. This conference and its community is my home. I love going to this event and connecting with old and new friends who continue to inspire me with their work year after year,” said Professor Purwar.
Professor Jeff Ge was one of seven invited speakers in the MR@50 session, a special session celebrating the conference’s 50th anniversary and recognizing pioneers and major contributors to the field. Ge presented “A Look Back,” a special lecture offering a historical perspective on the growth of the conference and the evolution of mechanisms and robotics research. His presentation highlighted major contributors to the field and explored the work of researchers who helped integrate robotics with the more traditional field of mechanism design.
Professor William Stewart was an invited speaker in the Special Early Career Session (SEC-Sess), which provides a forum for emerging researchers to present recent contributions and discuss future research directions. His talk, “How Robot Hardware Can Keep Up with the Pace of AI Advancement,” examined the growing gap between rapid advances in AI and machine learning and the pace of robot hardware development.
Stewart discussed how increasingly sophisticated AI and control algorithms could outpace the physical capabilities of the robots they operate, and proposed rethinking the traditional design-build-test approach to accelerate robot hardware development. He also presented current work in his lab and discussed how it could contribute to the next generation of robotic hardware.
“I was honored to be invited to give a talk and it was fantastic to meet many new people in the ASME community and get to know potential future collaborators,” said Professor Stewart.
Stony Brook faculty and students also presented research spanning a range of topics in robotics and engineering design, including robotic finger trajectory following, data-driven and AI-assisted kinematic synthesis, motion synthesis for four-bar mechanisms, topology optimization for large-scale electric generators, and quantum-assisted topology optimization.
The conference provided an opportunity for Stony Brook faculty and students to present their work, exchange ideas with researchers in the field, and receive feedback on their ongoing research.
“It was great to see our students presenting their work and engaging directly with researchers from academia and industry,” said Professor Shikui Chen. “For our group, the conference was also a good opportunity to share our recent work on electric-machine design and quantum-assisted topology optimization and get feedback from the broader design community.”
The Mechanisms and Robotics Conference is the premier annual event organized by the ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Committee as part of ASME IDETC-CIE. The 2026 meeting marked the conference’s 50th year and featured research across areas including robot design, motion planning, human-centered robotics, soft robotics, parallel and reconfigurable mechanisms, rehabilitation robotics, biomechanics, grasping and manipulation, compliant mechanisms, mechanical metamaterials, and origami-inspired systems.
Stony Brook’s faculty contributions and student presentations at the 50th anniversary conference highlighted the department’s research across robotics, mechanisms, computational design, electric-machine design, and advanced topology optimization.