Horizon Europe European Research Council (ERC), which supports investigator-driven research with the philosophy that the researchers will determine their own direction to produce promising projects, announced that it will give 1.5 million Euros support for our Textile Technologies and Design Faculty Member Assoc. Prof. Dr. Özgür Atalay’s project titled “TEXWEAROTS”. The project titled “Textile-Based Wearable Soft Robotics with Integrated Sensing, Actuating and Self Powering Properties - TEXWEAROTS”, which is the second ERC project undertaken by Istanbul Technical University, will bring together textile technology and robotic science to produce textile-based robotic structures. The structures to be produced are aimed for the treatment of individuals with muscle weakness. Stating that textile-based robotic structures with the ability to sense, move and produce energy, and truly wearable soft robotic structures will be produced within the scope of the project, Atalay said: “Although textile-based and silicone-based wearable soft robotic structures produced today are called soft systems, they contain a large amount of solid and heavy parts, and the energy requirement for these systems is also a problem.”
The systems to be produced within the scope of the TEXWEAROTS project aim to find solutions to the problems faced by wearable robotic structures today. In addition, the knowledge that will emerge from this project will contribute not only to soft robotic systems, but also to studies in electronic textiles and flexible and wearable energy systems.
About Assoc. Prof. Dr. Özgür Atalay
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Atalay completed his master's and doctorate studies in the field of smart textiles at the University of Manchester in England. Doing post-doctoral research in soft robotic systems at Harvard University in the USA, Dr. Atalay received a Marie Curie Individual Research Fellowship (IF) within the scope of the EU Horizon 2020 program in 2019. He continued to work in the field of smart textiles and soft robotics with various international and national projects he undertook. Currently, he works under the softsensorslab working group, which he manages together with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gökhan İnce.