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About

Michael A. Peshkin is a pioneering roboticist whose work has fundamentally shaped the field of human-robot interaction, with particular emphasis on collaborative robotics, haptics, and rehabilitation engineering. He is perhaps best known as a co-inventor of the "cobot" — the collaborative robot — a groundbreaking architecture introduced in 1996 and refined through subsequent influential publications (accumulating nearly 900 combined citations) that reimagined robots not as autonomous machines but as intelligent physical partners capable of guiding human motion through virtual surfaces and haptic constraints. This vision helped lay the conceptual foundation for today's collaborative robotics industry. Peshkin's impact extends deeply into rehabilitation and prosthetics. His work on robotic touch and embodiment in prosthetic limbs (333 citations) demonstrated that artificial tactile feedback could shift amputees' sense of self-identification toward a prosthesis — a landmark finding bridging robotics, neuroscience, and medicine. He also developed the KineAssist, a robotic gait and balance training device (over 300 combined citations) that has influenced clinical rehabilitation practice. Earlier foundational contributions to sensorless robotic manipulation planning (159 citations) underscore the breadth of his career. Across more than three decades, Peshkin's research has consistently advanced safe, effective, and intuitive physical collaboration between humans and machines.