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About

Stefan Johansson is a pioneering robotics researcher whose career has been defined by the development of miniature and microrobotic systems for precision manipulation at the micro- and nanoscale. His work sits at the intersection of robotics, piezoelectric actuation, and microsystems engineering, with particular emphasis on creating autonomous mobile robots small enough to operate in biological and microsystems technology environments. Johansson's most influential contribution is the MICRON project (2005, 80 citations), which demonstrated small autonomous robots capable of cell manipulation — addressing fundamental challenges in multi-robot coordination and scaling effects that had long hampered conventional stationary systems. His earlier MINIMAN system (2001) laid important groundwork by establishing a flexible platform for micro-manipulation across diverse applications. A thread running throughout his research is the innovative use of piezoelectric drive units, which he has both fabricated and rigorously analyzed for quasi-static and dynamic motion, resulting in several foundational papers accumulating over 100 combined citations. Perhaps most visionary is his work on mass-producible millimeter-sized robots using flexible printed circuit boards (2009), demonstrating robots weighing just 65 mg — pointing toward scalable microrobotics manufacturing. Collectively, his contributions have helped define what autonomous microrobotics can achieve in biomedical and precision assembly contexts.