Dr. Amy Wu is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Queen’s University. She leads the Biomechanics x Robotics Laboratory (BxRL) and is a member of the Queen’s Ingenuity Labs Research Institute. Her research interests include mechatronics, human biomechanics, and wearable and assistive devices. One of Dr. Wu’s projects, Rando the Robot, is a low-cost bipedal walking robot with an open-source mindset, to expand accessibility to and involvement in walking robot education and research. She has demonstrated this project at Queen’s Park in Toronto, Maker Faire Rome, and Science Rendezvous Kingston.

In this episode, Dr. Wu discusses her work at BxRL and the first-principles approach in understanding the mechanics and energies of human movement for robot design and biomechanics. She also explains the motivation for constructing Rando the Robot with an open-source mindset to encourage cost-efficient robotics research.

Please visit the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering for more information about Dr. Wu’s research.