YASH MULGAONKAR is pursuing a robotics engineering PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, working in the preeminent drone research lab led by Dr. Vijay Kumar. Bigger is not always better, and in early in Yash’s research he created the world’s smallest autonomous quadrotor, called the “Pico Quad.” Through the Pico, he has been able to demonstrate the remarkable durability, agility, and capability of swarms of small collaborative flying robots. Although each quad is smaller than a credit card, together they are able to build bigger, search more, and navigate tighter spaces than robots ever have.

Ever since he was a grade-school student in India, Yash has dreamt of bringing highly-capable, low-cost robots to everyone in the world. Today, his research concentrates on low-cost, rapid fabrication methods and embedded design for building small Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). Everything - from his work on 3D printable robots, to the tiny Pico Quad, to work he now does with smartphone-based robots - points to bringing robots to everyone. This work has earned him numerous awards, press, and commendation from the former President of India.

Pushing the barrier of not just cost, but also capability, Yash has developed systems for extending mission life for fully autonomous multi-agent persistent aerial missions through task distribution and automated charging -- basically robots that fly longer, fly smarter, and fly together.

As part of his dream of bringing robots to the world, Yash has led several STEM educational initiatives. Through STEM outreach programs run by the lab, Yash has given talks and demos on robots to over 3,000 students from 15 Philadelphia schools, over the past 5 years. In that time, nearly 100 students have reconnected with Yash, citing those mentorship moments as being the inspirational to study engineering at the collegiate level.

He also maintains a detailed list of his publications and an updated CV at http://yashmulgaonkar.com/CV