research overview
- My overarching research theme is automation in embodied (robots) or embedded (sensors) systems. My research vision, summarized as Robots Creating Robots, is to transform the way that robots are designed and fabricated. Building robots via conventional practice requires painstaking design and assembly steps that rely heavily on human intuition and individual expertise. I develop algorithms and fabrication techniques that automate the design and production of customized robots in order to accelerate this process, with the goal of automatically designing robots that 'walk out of the printer'. My second research theme, biosensing, addresses the following challenge. Understanding biological systems requires observations, yet monitoring free-ranging organisms, including humans, presents technical hurdles that limit the quantity and quality of scientific data, impacting applications ranging from wetland management to eldercare. I design and deploy small, robust, long-lived automated biosensing instruments that enable dramatic improvements in the quantity and quality of movement data for small organisms.
