Event
MRC Seminar: Materials, Mechanisms, and Math: Towards $1 Makers
Friday, September 13, 2024
2:00 p.m.
JMP 2116
Materials, Mechanisms, and Math: Towards $1 Makers
Ankur Mehta
Assistant Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
UCLA
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? 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. In our lab, we work to lower barriers to robotics design, creation, and operation through material and mechanism design, computational tools, and mathematical analysis. We hope that with our efforts, everyone will be soon able to enjoy the benefits of robotics to work, to learn, and to play.
Biography
Prof. Ankur Mehta is an associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mechanical and Aerospace 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.
Prior to joining the UCLA faculty, Prof. Mehta was a postdoc at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratories investigating design automation for printable robots. Before to that, he conducted research as a graduate student at UC Berkeley in wireless sensor networks and systems, small autonomous aerial robots and rockets, control systems, and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS).
Prof. Mehta received the DARPA YFA in 2022, NSF CAREER award in 2018, and was named a Samueli Fellow in 2015. He and his group has won best demo, best presentation awards, and best paper awards at ARSO, ICRA, and IROS.
When not in the lab, Ankur enjoys puzzles, ultimate frisbee, board games, and social dancing.
Host: Ryan Sochol
