Robotics is increasingly becoming a significant tool in civil engineering, with the potential to remove humans from hazardous work environments and reduce physically demanding labor. At Stony Brook University, several faculty members are leading projects that leverage robotics to address contemporary challenges.
Assistant Professors Wei Li, Ci-Jyun (Polar) Liang, and Paolo Celli from the Department of Civil Engineering are at the forefront of these efforts. Wei Li's research focuses on developing tactile sensing robots capable of handling delicate materials. This project is a collaboration with Michigan State University's Shaoting Lin and Purdue University's Yu She, supported by a National Science Foundation grant.
Li's work builds on his expertise as a geotechnical engineer and utilizes photoelasticity to study granular media interactions. The team has miniaturized this technology into robotic fingertips, allowing robots to sense material properties more effectively than human touch. "In the future this can be applied to medical robots for surgery and also underwater robots," said Li.
Ci-Jyun (Polar) Liang aims to enhance safety and sustainability in construction through human-robot collaboration. His approach involves using robots for repetitive tasks like heavy lifting and bricklaying, which can be harmful to humans. Robots learn these tasks via imitation and reinforcement learning from human demonstrations. "The robot can observe the environment and provide different solutions if they didn’t see those scenarios in the human’s demonstration," explained Liang.
Paolo Celli is developing underground-burrowing robots with flexible structural skins for site investigation and excavation tasks. Working alongside Ali Khosravi from Auburn University, Celli received an NSF grant for this research. Their innovations aim to simplify underground utility line installations—a critical need given increasing weather-related power outages in the U.S.
Celli collaborates with Kathryn Daltorio from Case Western Reserve University on a project funded by ARPA-E to create a robot that uses peristaltic motion for efficient underground movement. "Beyond robotics, these shape morphing structures we investigate can be useful as temporary structures, shelters... or even toys," said Celli.
Reflecting on robotics' role in civil engineering, Celli stated: “I don’t think robots will ever completely replace construction workers or jobs like that... But there are some tasks that require some type of operation that is typically very intensive and disruptive that could be supported by robots.”
— Angelina Livigni