Robotics Engineering Colloquium Series
Ankur Mehta, UCLA
Towards $1 Roboticists
Wednesday, March 29th, 2023
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Unity Hall | Room 520
Abstract: Robots are pretty great -- they can make some hard tasks easy, some dangerous tasks safe, or some unthinkable tasks possible. And they're just plain fun to boot. But how many robots have you interacted with recently? What would it take for you to make your own? And where do you think that puts you compared to the rest of the world's people? In contrast to computation, automating physical interactions continues to be limited in scope and breadth. I'd like to change that. But in particular, I'd like to do so in a way that's accessible to everyone, everywhere. That is, I target my work towards lowering barriers in robotics design, fabrication, and operation---through material and mechanism design, computational tools, and mathematical analysis. With these efforts, everyone will be soon able to enjoy the benefits of engineering creation to work, to learn, and to play.
Bio: Prof. Ankur Mehta is an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCLA, and directs the Laboratory for Embedded Machines and Ubiquitous Robots (LEMUR). Pushing towards his visions of a future filled with robots, his research interests involve printable robotics, rapid design and fabrication, control systems, and multi-agent networks. He has received the DARPA Young Faculty award, NSF CAREER award, and a Samueli fellowship; he has also received best paper awards in the IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine and the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
Ankur's only vehicle is a pair of inline skates; when not in the lab, he enjoys puzzles, ultimate frisbee, board games, and social dancing.