Laura Blumenschein

Laura Blumenschein

Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering

School of Mechanical Engineering
Purdue University
585 Purdue Mall
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2088
lhblumen@purdue.edu

Degrees

  • Ph.D., Stanford University '19
  • M.S., Rice University '16
  • B.S., Rice University '15

Research Interests

  • Growing robots
  • Soft robotics
  • Bioinspired systems
  • Wearable robots
  • Haptics
  • Soft matter

Fundamental Research Area(s)

Application Area(s)

Awards and Recognitions

  • National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, 2015-2019
  • Alan J. Chapman Award in Mechanical Engineering, 2015
  • Edgar Odell Lovett Service Award, 2015
  • Louis J. Walsh Engineering Scholarship, 2011
  • Century Scholars Program, 2011

Selected Publications

L. H. Blumenschein, M. Koehler, N. S. Usevitch, E. W. Hawkes, D. C. Rucker and A. M. Okamura (Submitted) Geometric Solutions for General Actuator Routing on Inflated Beam Soft Growing Robots. doi: arXiv:2006.06117 [cs.RO]

L. Gan*, L. H. Blumenschein*, Z. Huang, A. M. Okamura, E. W. Hawkes and J. Fan (2020) 3D Electromagnetic Reconfiguration Enabled by Soft Continuum Robots. IEEE Robotics and Au- tomation Letters, 5(2):1704-1711. doi: 10.1109/LRA.2020.2969922
* indicates equal contribution

M. M. Coad, R. P. Thomasson, L. H. Blumenschein, N. S. Usevitch, E. W. Hawkes and A. M. Okamura (2020) Retraction of Soft Growing Robots without Buckling. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 5(2):2115-2122. doi: 10.1109/LRA.2020.2970629

J. D. Greer, L. H. Blumenschein, R. Alterovitz, E. W. Hawkes and A. M. Okamura (2020) Robust Navigation of a Soft Growing Robot by Exploiting Contact with the Environment. International Journal of Robotics Research. doi.org/10.1177/0278364920903774

M. M. Coad, L. H. Blumenschein, S. Cutler, J. A. Reyna Zepeda, N. D. Naclerio, H. El- Hussieny, U. Mehmood, J.-H. Ryu, E. W. Hawkes and A. M. Okamura (2019) Vine Robots: Design, Teleoperation, and Deployment for Navigation and Exploration. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (in press). doi: 10.1109/MRA.2019.2947538

L. H. Blumenschein, Y. Menguc (2019) Generalized Delta Mechanisms from Soft Actuators. In IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), pages 249-256. doi: 10.1109/RO- BOSOFT.2019.8722794

D. P. Losey, L. H. Blumenschein, J. Clark, and M. K. OMalley (2019) Improving Short-Term Retention after Robotic Rehabilitation by Leveraging Fixed-Gain Controllers. Journal of rehabilitation and assistive technologies engineering, 6:2055668319866311. doi: 10.1177/2055668319866311

L. H. Blumenschein, N. S. Usevitch, B. Do, E. W. Hawkes and A. M. Okamura (2018) Helical Actuation on a Soft Inflated Robot Body. In IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), pages 245-252. doi: 10.1109/ROBOSOFT.2018.8404927

L. H. Blumenschein*, L. Gan*, J. Fan, A. M. Okamura and E. W. Hawkes (2018) A Tip- Extending Soft Robot Enables Reconfigurable and Deployable Antennas. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 3(2):949-956. doi: 10.1109/LRA.2018.2793303
* indicates equal contribution

L. H. Blumenschein, A. M. Okamura and E. W. Hawkes (2017) Modeling of Bioinspired Apical Extension in a Soft Robot. In Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems. Living Machines 2017, pages 522-53. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63537-8 45

E. W. Hawkes, L. H. Blumenschein, J. D. Greer and A. M. Okamura (2017) A soft robot that navigates its environment through growth. Science Robotics, 2(8):eaan3028. doi:10.1126/scirobotics. aan3028

L. H. Blumenschein, C. G. McDonald and M. K. O’Malley (2017) A cable-based series elastic actuator with conduit sensor for wearable exoskeletons. In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages 6687-6693. doi: 10.1109/ICRA.2017.7989790