Petras Swissler

Assistant Professor, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
About Me
Petras Swissler received his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, IN, USA in 2012 and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA, in 2022.He is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA.
Education
Ph.D.; Northwestern University; Mechanical Engineering; 2022
M.S.; Northwestern University; Mechanical Engineering; 2018
B.S.; Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Mechanical Engineering; 2012
Experience
Parametric Solutions Inc.
Mechanical Engineer, June 2012 - August 2016
Website
https://innovative-robotics.github.io/
2026 Fall Courses
ME 792B - PRE-DOCTORAL RESEARCH
ME 726 - INDEPENDENT STUDY II
ME 490 - MECH ENGR PROJECT A
ME 701B - MASTER'S THESIS
ME 790A - DOC DISSERTATION & RES
ME 491 - MECH ENGR PROJECT B
ME 625 - INTRODUCTION TO ROBOTICS
ME 700B - MASTER'S PROJECT
ME 701C - MASTER'S THESIS
ME 725 - INDEPENDENT STUDY I
Teaching Interests
Mechatronics, Robotics, Design
Past Courses
ME 430: INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN
ME 625: INTRODUCTION TO ROBOTICS
ME 791: MECHANICAL ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Research Interests
Cross-disciplinary robotics: What synergies and knowledge exchange can occur between the fields ofrobotics, biology, manufacturing, urban science, and other disparate fields?

Collective robotics: How can we use the unique abilities of distributed robotic systems, especially in thecontext of UAVs in real-world settings?

Robot self-assembly: How robots can join their bodies to form useful structures?
Other
"TinZr: A Compact Wireless ESP32-C3 Platform for Multi-modal Physiological Data Acquisition"
Elsevier BV, December, 2026.
"TinZr: A Compact Wireless ESP32-C3 Platform for Multi-modal Physiological Data Acquisition"
Elsevier BV, 2026.
Chapter
Petras Swissler. "Behavioral Heterogeneity Enhances Self-assembly: Exploring Variants of the ReactiveBuild Algorithm." "Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics," pp. 100-114. Springer Nature Switzerland, 2026.
Petras Swissler, Michael Rubenstein. "ReactiveBuild: Environment-Adaptive Self-Assembly of Amorphous Structures." "Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics," pp. 363-375. Springer International Publishing, 2022.
Journal Article
Mohammadali Rashidioun, SangWoo Park, Petras Swissler. 2026. "DeRP: An Algorithm for Self-Assembly of Power-Delivery Networks using Recursive Branching in Information-Limited Environments." arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.02904.
Ludvik Alkhoury, Tony Moore, Petras Swissler, N. Jeremy Hill, Sudhin A. Shah, Moshe Kam. 2026. "TinZr: A compact wireless ESP32-C3 platform for multi-modal physiological sensor integration and data acquisition." HardwareX Elsevier, vol. 28, pp. 17 pp..
Ludvik Alkhoury, Giacomo Scanavini, Petras Swissler, Sudhin A. Shah, Disha Gupta, N. Jeremy Hill. 2025. "SyncGenie: A programmable event synchronization device for neuroscience research." HardwareX, vol. 21, pp. e00619.
Petras Swissler, Michael Rubenstein. 2023. "FireAntV3: A modular self-reconfigurable robot towards free-form self-assembly using attach-anywhere continuous docks." IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters , vol. 8, no. 8, pp. 4911-4918.
Conference Proceeding
"Optimal Reconfiguration of Distributed Battery Networks Under Connectivity and Energy Constraints"
2026.
"FireAnt3D: a 3D self-climbing robot towards non-latticed robotic self-assembly"
IEEE, October (4th Quarter/Autumn), 2020.
"FireAnt: A Modular Robot with Full-Body Continuous Docks"
IEEE, May, 2018.