Hirai Shinichi

Professor at the Department of Robotics at Ritsumeikan University, Shiga, Japan. He is also the Director of the Soft Robotics Laboratory (Hirai LAB) that investigates robots with novel functions brought by soft materials and its related technologies, including soft sensors and actuators. B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, in 1985, 1987, and 1991, respectively, all in applied mathematics and physics. His research interests include soft robotic hands, soft sensors, soft object manipulation, and soft object modeling.

For the last 30 years, he has been working at the Department of Robotics at Ritsumeikan University, Kusatsu, Japan, where he has been a professor since 2002. He was a Visiting Researcher with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA, and Assistant Professor at Osaka University, Suita, Japan. Dr. Hirai has been awarded the Best Paper Award in 2008, FOOMA Japan Academic Plaza Award in 2018, and International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots Best Paper Award in 2020.