SEMINAR: Biomechatronics - Technology Serving the Community
Speaker: Prof. Joel Huegel
Title: Biomechatronics - Technology Serving the Community
Date/Time:17 May 2022 (Tuesday) / 14:40 - 15:30
Hybrid:Room FENS L063
Zoom link: https://sabanciuniv.zoom.us/j/97965864695
Abstract:Biomechatronics is an emerging field of applied knowledge. It is the multi-disciplinary synergy between mechanical and electronics engineering coupled with computation and control theory, a synergy that permits the creation bionic systems. Thus biomechatronics encompasses the fields of robotics, human-robot interaction, and neuroscience, among others. Although other researchers have narrowly defined biomechatronics as a synonym to bionics, I take the broader stance defining it is any electromechanical system that interacts directly, replaces, emulates, or simulates a biological system. Certainly, the human body is included by this definition, but not limited to it. In this seminar, I will present some of the current projects of the Biomechatronics research lab at the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico, and then divert to a non-traditional discussion emphasizing those biomechatronics projects with a community development content. According to the 2010 UNESCO Report on Engineering, engineering for development responds to the global need for the understanding of both human development and sustainability problems, problems which have engineering components, thereby requiring engineering knowledge and creative problem solving. I seek to motivate the next generation of engineers with: a sense of the future needs of societies and the abilities required in order to interact with other disciplines, communities, business and political leadership. I will open the discussion on current trends in engineering for community service and humanitarian needs and the essential responsibility of the profession to recognize, prevent, and mitigate undesirable consequences from new technology. This discussion leads to a roadmap for academia’s role in creating the solutions for these problems via rigorous product engineering and design, products delivered with basic but rugged functionality through humanitarian and community development channels rather than only traditional commercial and capitalist channels.
Bio: Joel Huegel received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering technology from LeTourneau University and the master’s and Ph.D. degrees both in mechanical engineering, but alternately from the University of Washington in 1998 and from Rice University in 2009. Since 2001 he has been research professor at the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Guadalajara, Mexico, and since 2009 leader of the Biomechatronics lab. His sabbaticals have been first in 2014 at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and then in 2018, as research affiliate, at Lisa K. Yang Center for bionics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include haptics, biomechatronics and humanitarian technologies. He was awarded the Pauchon Foundation annual award in 2013 for his work in humanitarian technology and the National Inspiring Professor award of the Tecnologico de Monterrey in 2021; He is the co-founder of two companies in the field of prosthetics. To date the tri-fold business model has helped over 200 people acquire and begin to use low-cost highly functional prostheses. In 2018 he secured, along with Dr. Hugh Herr of MIT, a Mexican foundation award to create a 5-year collaboration between the two Biomechatronics groups. Joel’s passion for teaching engineering in the developing world has taken him from the Unites States, to teaching in universities in Mexico, South and Central America, as well as Asia. He is now tenured professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Tec de Monterrey, the premiere private university in Mexico.