Research

*

Vision and force based autonomous coating with rollers

Designed a compliant roller and implemented passive impedance control with vision that allows robots to realize human-level performance
1). Proposed a framework enabling a robot with only position control to recognize the shape of 3D objects, and plan the coating trajectory autonomously;
2). Used bare minimum ingredients to realize constant-force coating with a compliant roller, in conjunction with a cheap ultrasonic sensor.

Simple but functional soft robots inspired by bacteria

1). Designed simple but functional soft flagellated robots to understand the movement mechanism of bacteria in the granular media and fluids;
2). Wrote C++ simulators based on Discrete Elastic Rods (DER) to simulate the robot movement faster than real time.

Low-cost Autonomous Weed-control Agri-robot

Design and implement a low-cost (under $500) compact autonomous robot to navigate, localize itself, recognize and spray weeds, and get recharged in narrow spacing crop fields for several weeks:
1). [Design and fabrication]: Design and fabricate the robot incorporating water-jetting the chassis, lathing the axles, 3D printing component holders, and compromising;
2). [Computer vision]: Without accurate expensive GPS, we combined LiDAR, IMU, wheel encoders, and cameras (including visual odometry) to navigate and locate the robot;
3). [Deep learning]: Build our own weed dataset, develope and deploy convolutional neural networks (CNN) on our onboard embedded system, i.e. the robot to enable the robot to differentiate different weeds and spray the corresponding herbicides.

Publications

We explore the locomotion of soft robots in granular medium resulting from the elastic deformation of slender rods. A low-cost, rapidly …

Education

 
 
 
 
 

Ph.D. Research Assistant

Structure and Computer Interaction Lab, UCLA

Apr 2018 – Present
  • Design and control simplt but functional soft flagellated robots inspired by bacteria and write discrete differential geometry-based simulators to understand the dynamics
  • Develop an autonomous weed-control agricultural robot

Advisor: Khalid M. Jawed

 
 
 
 
 

University of California, Los Angeles

M.S. in Systems and Control

Sep 2016 – Mar 2018 Los Angeles, California, US
 
 
 
 
 

Harbin Institute of Technology

B.S. in Automotive Engineering

Sep 2012 – Jun 2016 Harbin, Heilongjiang, China

Awards

GRADUATE:

  • 2021 Mentor of Honorable Mention Best Researcher in Summer Undergraduate Researcher Program (SURP) 2021 at UCLA
  • 2021 MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Rising Stars travel grant
  • 2021 Chinese-American Engineers and Scientists Association of Southern California (CESASC) Scholarship ($1,000)
  • 2018-2021 Graduate Division Fellowship from UCLA Graduate Division ($ 49,097.72/year)
  • 2016 Best Article Award from UCLA Graduate Division for sharing the story ``How I get to UCLA”

UNDERGRADUATE:

  • 2012-2016 National Scholarship from Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (Top 1%)
  • 2015 Top Ten Students of Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai (1010000)
  • 2015 Outstanding Leader Award from Harbin Institute of Technology (Top 2%)
  • 2015 Honorable Mention from COMAP for Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM)
  • 2014 Best-organized Volunteer Team Leader from Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai
  • 2013 First Prize in Mathematics Competition for College Students in Heilongjiang Province (Top 8%)
  • 2013 First Prize in National English Competition for College Students (Top 0.5%)
  • 2013 Most Creative Award from Department of Automotive Engineering for the design of pressure oil pump (110 teams)

Teaching

Undergraduate Summer Intern

Zihang Zhao, Visiting Undergraduate Student
"Build a compact agriculture robot for weed control"

UCLA Undergraduate Student Research Program (SRP) 199

-- 2020-2021 Wenjie Mo, Chenda Duan, Yu Zhou, Guofeng Zhang, Darren Tsang
"Low-cost autonomous agricultural robot for weed control"
-- 2019-2021 Andrew Miller, Arthur Lovekin
"Bacteria-inspired flagellated robot turn by buckling soft tails"
-- 2019 Keerthi Pradaa Balajee
"Bacteria-inspired soft robot capable of traveling through granular media"
-- 2019 Taiki Nagata
"Collaborative robotic drawing simulation in Vrep with constant force"

UCLA Undergraduate Student Research Program (SRP) 99

Karunesh Schanandani, Jacqueline Lam
"2D movement control of soft robots in low Reynolds number of fluid"

Teaching Assistant for Physics 5C Physics for Life Sciences Majors: Electricity, Magnetism, and Modern Physics Physics 1C Physics for Scientists and Engineers: Electrodynamics, Optics, and Special Relativity (Undergraduate)

Student evaluation: 8.0/9.0 (All TAs’ average is ~7.29.0)

Teaching Assistant for M20 Introduction to Computer Programming with MATLAB (Undergraduate)

Student evaluation: 8.0/9.0 (All TAs’ average is ~7.0/9.0)

Teaching Assistant for Psychology 120B Sensation & Perception (Undergraduate)

Student evaluation: 8.0/9.0 (All TAs’ average is ~7.59.0)

Teaching Associate for ECE 205A Matrix Analysis for Scientists and Engineers (Graduate)

Student evaluation: 8.0/9.0 (All TAs’ average is ~7.29.0)

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Research Assistant

Structure and Computer Interaction Lab, UCLA

Apr 2018 – Present Engineering IV, Rm 15-155
  • Dir 1: Simple but functional soft robot inspired by bacteria

    • Step 1: Design the simplest autonomous soft flagellated robot able to swim in granular media and fluids;
    • Step 2: Write a discrete differential geometry (DDG)-based simulator, 10x-100x faster than real time to simulate the performance of soft flagellated robots;
    • Step 3: Collect massive data from robots and use machine learning to learn their locomotion and help with optimal robot design.
  • Dir 2: Design and control an autonomous weed-control agricultural robot Advisor: Khalid M. Jawed

 
 
 
 
 

Research Assistant

Biomechatronics Laboratory, UCLA

Apr 2017 – Present Engineering IV, Rm 37-138
Build the fluid and structure interaction (FSI) model of BioTac tactile sensor. * Advisor: Veronica Santos
 
 
 
 
 

Research Assistant

New Energy Vehicle Research Institute, Harbin Institue of Tech (HIT)

Sep 2014 – Present Songjian Yan Jiu Yuan, Weihai, China
Perform research on distributed vehicle system control on alternative fuel vehicles. * Advisor: Dafang Wang