Towards $1 Roboticists

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 made, or even interacted with recently? 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--letting more people in to the engineering conversation.  In our lab, we work to lower barriers to the design, creation, and operation of mechanical machines—from material and mechanism design, through mathematical analysis, to computational frameworks and tools.With our efforts, we hope to widen the circle of makers, enabling everyone with an idea and an interest to create and enjoy the benefits of custom robotics to work, to learn, and to play.

Bio:
Prof. Ankur Mehta received his Bachelor and Mater degrees from MIT, and Ph. D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He 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).