About

Andrew Spielberg is a robotics and computational design researcher whose work bridges physical simulation, robot design automation, and soft robotics fabrication. He is perhaps best known for **ChainQueen** (2019, 223 citations), a real-time differentiable physical simulator that enabled gradient-based optimization for soft robot planning and control — a foundational contribution that helped establish differentiable simulation as a cornerstone of modern robotics research. His **RoboGrammar** framework (2020, 140 citations) further demonstrated his range, introducing graph-grammar-based automated robot structure generation optimized for terrain traversal. Spielberg has made significant strides in soft robotics fabrication, developing machine-knitting workflows for pneumatic actuators with integrated sensing (2022, 102 citations) and multi-material 3D printing platforms for programmable liquid crystal elastomer structures (2024, 67 citations). His earlier work democratized robot design through systems like Interactive Robogami (2017) and addressed multi-robot assembly planning challenges. Across co-design, sim-to-real transfer, and sensor placement optimization for soft robots, Spielberg consistently works at the intersection of computation, learning, and physical fabrication — producing tools that lower barriers for both expert and novice robot designers.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

16
H-Index
26
Papers
1,018
Total Citations
39
Avg Citations/Paper
🏆 Most Cited Paper
ChainQueen: A Real-Time Differentiable Physical Simulator for Soft Robotics
223 citations · 2019
📈 Most Prolific Year: 2024 (4 Papers)
🤝 Key Collaborators: 69
🏛 Institutions: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (Canada), Harvard University Press

Top Papers

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    RoboGrammar
    140 citations · 2020
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Key Collaborators

Contact & Links

Available for collaboration
Content generated · 13 days ago