Thesis

Unified Force-Sensitive Robot Mechatronics: Pneumatic Robots, Electronimagnetic Prostheses, Cable-Driven Exoskeletons

Biography

Alexander Tödtheide received his Dr.-Ing. in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Munich with “summa cum laude” in July 2023 and a Dipl.-Ing. in mechanical engineering from the Leibniz University of Hanover in March 2015.

During his scientific career, he worked at the Simulation, Systems Optimization and Robotics Group at Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany) with Professor Oskar von Stryk from March 2015 to August 2015, and subsequently, at the Institute of Automatic Control (IRT) at the Leibniz University of Hannover with Professor Sami Haddadin from September 2015 to March 2018. He continued his research with Professor Sami Haddadin at the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) from April 2018 to December 2022. He is currently working as the Head of Mechatronics at Danobat Switzerland AG in the field of precision robotics.

In terms of key projects, he participated in the DARPA robotics Challenge in 2015 as part of Team ViGIR with his research on robot model identification of the Boston Dynamics ATLAS robot. He also contributed to the project SoftPro Horizon 2020 by developing robot devices and controllers such as artificial compliant pneumatic robots, tactile upper-limb prostheses, and exoskeletons – works which are continued in MIRMI’s Geriatronics research and clinically related projects such as A.ID. Together with his colleague, Dr.-Ing. Johannes Kühn, he co-founded the first MIRMI cybathlon team “Cybertum” and master’s course, where he supervised a student team in a from-scratch development of an advanced upper-limb prosthesis towards the finals of the Cybathlon competition 2020 in Zurich, Switzerland.

His doctoral thesis “Unified Force-Sensitive Robot Mechatronics” deals with a development approach for tactile robotic systems, combining the modeling, design and control of the robot within one holistic framework. The framework is successfully validated by three distinct robotic devices that were designed based on various actuation, sensing, and transmission concepts, implemented, and experimentally tested. The thesis provides novel insights on the design and control of specialized tactile robotic systems and simplifies future developments. The thesis was graded with the highest mark by Professor Sami Haddadin from Technical University of Munich (TUM), Professor Tamim Asfour from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Professor Robert Riener from the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ).

Contact

• LinkedIn
• Google Scholar
• inspire AG

Selected Publications

• Alexander Toedtheide, Edmundo Pozo Fortunic, Johannes Kühn, Elisabeth Rose Jensen, Sami Haddadin, A transhumeral prosthesis with an artificial neuromuscular system: Sim2real-guided design, modeling, and control, 2024. [Project Page]
• Johannes Kühn, Tingli Hu, Alexander Toedtheide, Edmundo Pozo Fortunic, Elisabeth Rose Jensen, Sami Haddadin, The synergy complement control approach for seamless limb-driven prostheses, 2024. [Project Page]
• Alexander Toedtheide, Edmundo Pozo Fortunic, Johannes Kühn, Elisabeth Rose Jensen, Sami Haddadin, A Wearable Force-Sensitive and Body-Aware Exoprosthesis for a Transhumeral Prosthesis Socket, 2023. [Project Page]
• Alexander Toedtheide, Xiao Chen, Hamid Sadeghian, Abdeldjallil Naceri, Sami Haddadin, A Force-Sensitive Exoskeleton for Teleoperation: An Application in Elderly Care Robotics, 2023. [Project Page]
• Alexander Toedtheide, Johannes Kühn, Edmundo Pozo Fortunic, Sami Haddadin, An Integrated, Force-Sensitive, Impedance Controlled, Tendon-Driven Wrist: Design, Modeling, and Control, 2021. [Project Page]
• Alexander Toedtheide, Sami Haddadin, CPA-Wrist: Compliant Pneumatic Actuation for Antagonistic Tendon Driven Wrists, 2018. [Project Page]
• Alexander Toedtheide, Erfan Shahriari, Sami Haddadin, Tank based unified torque/impedance control for a pneumatically actuated antagonistic robot joint, 2017. [Project Page]
• Alexander Toedtheide, Torsten Lilge, Sami Haddadin, Antagonistic Impedance Control for Pneumatically Actuated Robot Joints, 2016. [Project Page]
• Jonathan Vorndamme, Moritz Schappler, Alexander Toedtheide, Sami Haddadin, Soft robotics for the hydraulic atlas arms: Joint impedance control with collision detection and disturbance compensation, 2016. [Project Page]
• Moritz Schappler, Jonathan Vorndamme, Alexander Toedtheide, David C. Conner, Oskar von Stryk, Sami Haddadin, Modeling, identification and joint impedance control of the atlas arms, 2015. [Project Page]