The Lighthouse Lab
The mission of our lab is centered on the idea of a lighthouse: We develop robotic systems that serve as a guide for people in recovery from previously undertreated physical and neurological impairments. The foundational methods of the lab combine differential geometry, motor neuroscience, and generative AI.
Learning from physical therapists
We monitor physical and occupational therapists during physical rehabilitation, then train robotic systems that can emulate them. Our goal is that more patients can be treated, and underserved communities can benefit.
Training prosthetic devices
Prosthetics and brain-machine interfaces focus almost entirely on motion generation. We want to let patients train their own prosthetic device with their intact hand, giving them the ability to physically interact with the world the way a healthy human hand does.
The structure of physical interaction
What we learn from building these systems, and from watching patients recover, feeds back into the open questions of motor neuroscience. Our guiding research question: how can people excel at physical interaction despite slow signaling and neuromuscular noise?
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Oct 1, 2026
Speaking at IROS 2026
Johannes speaks at the 2nd Workshop on Geometric-Aware Representations on the closing day of IROS 2026 — Thursday, 3:05 pm Eastern, David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh.
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Sep 4, 2026
ICON Weekly Seminar at Purdue
Johannes speaks at the Purdue Institute for Control, Optimization and Networks on Physics-Grounded AI: A Unifying Framework for Stable, Safe, and Human-Mimetic Robotic Physical Interaction — Friday, 3 pm Eastern, MSEE 112.
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Aug 5, 2026
Covered in MIT News
MIT News featured our work on robotic physical therapy that learns from therapists to adaptively support stroke patients.
Join us
We are looking for curious students excited by physical modeling, fluent in linear algebra and geometry, and comfortable writing code that runs on real robotic systems.