Smart Robots Design Laboratory is a research institution under the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, in Tohoku University. It is focused on creating innovative robotic systems that can interact with humans in a real environment, to aid the users in different tasks, and also robots that can interact and cooperate with each other, in order to achieve a goal.

One of the main areas of interest is passive robotics, which consists on creating robotic systems using only passive elements such as breaks. This eliminates the inherent risks of interacting with robotic systems containing active elements, such as motors, allowing a safer interaction. The passive robotics concept can apply to not only human-robot interaction but also several research fields such as object handling, surveillance using multiple robots, etc. These passive systems provide benefits from the practical point of view such as simple structure, low cost, low power consumption, high safety, etc.

Hirata Lab was created in 2007, and reborn at a new space in 2016. It is located on the A-15 Building, at Aobayama Campus. Its members are students from diverse fields (Control Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Computer Science) both from Japan and overseas.

Tamura laboratory : https://tamlab.jp

Laboratory Information


Tohoku University, School of Engineering
Undergrad Department: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Course of Robotics
Graduate Department: Department of Robotics

Number of Members


CategoryNumber of persons
Staff11
PhD Students9
Master Students22
Undergrad Students9
Research Students6
Total57