Robot VIPs: Roboticists you should know about (part 1)

In the years that I’ve worked at National Instruments, I’ve come across several engineers and scientists that are doing incredibly cool things in the robotics industry, using NI technologies. I’ve been lucky to meet some famous, some accomplished, or some just down right geeky people that are definitely worth knowing . I’d like to share my list of Roboticists You Should Know About, starting with one of my favorite VIPs:

Name: Dr. Dennis Hong

Title: Associate Professor and the Director of RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Virginia Tech

Expertise:

• Novel robot locomotion mechanisms
• Design and analysis of mechanical systems
• Kinematics and robot mechanism design
• Humanoid robots
• Autonomous systems

Geek cred:

• Named one of Popular Science’s Brilliant 10,  “a selection of ten young geniuses shaking up science today”
• Presented a TEDx talk (when you’ve done a TEDS talk, you know you’re a big deal)
• Recipient of NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development Program Award: Worth more than $400,000, this is NSF’s most prestigious award for creative junior faculty who are considered likely to become academic leaders of the future.
• He’s even been featured on Discovery Channel! (see the video clip embedded below)

Cool projects:

• Blind Driver Challenge
• Team VaCAS: Multi-Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge (MAGIC) 2010
• Team DARwIn: 2009 RoboCup Humanoid League
• Team VictorTango: 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge (won third place, beating the likes of MIT)
• Meet all the other cool robots in Dr. Hong’s Lab:

How to Join:

• Check out what Dr. Hong and the RoMeLa crew are looking for in graduate students who want to join the team: http://www.romela.org/main/Joining_RoMeLa