Yash Mulgaonkar - Roboticist

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Forbes 30 Under 30 for Science!

I am writing to express my sincere gratitude to Forbes and their panel of judges for selecting me for their 2016 Forbes ‪#30Under30 list for Science. I am deeply humbled to have been chosen for such a prestigious honor. I want to sincerely thank my family and friends for the continued unwavering support and encouragement.

I am a PhD student at The School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania under the mentorship of Prof. Vijay Kumar. My research at The GRASP Lab here, is focused on low-cost, rapid fabrication methods and embedded design for building “pico scale” MAVs. I have also developed systems for extending their mission life for fully autonomous multi-agent persistent aerial missions through task distribution and automated charging.

I have a Master's degrees in Robotics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Mumbai in India.

You can download a plain text version of my Bio here.

Research Areas

Robotics
Mechatronics
SWaP Constraint Optimization in Robots
Product Design
Embedded Systems
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)
Health Management in UAVs
Alternative Power Sources for UAVs
Articulated Manipulator Design for UAVs
Robotic Haptic Exploration

Publications

Book Chapters

"Initialization-Free Monocular Visual-Inertial State Estimation with Application to Autonomous MAVs,"
S. Shen , Y. Mulgaonkar, N. Michael and V. Kumar,
Experimental Robotics Vol. 109, Pg. 211-227, Springer 2016
[Link] | [bib]
"Inspection of Penstocks and Featureless Tunnel-like Environments Using Micro UAVs,"
T. Özaslan , S. Shen, Y. Mulgaonkar, N. Michael and V. Kumar,
Field and Service Robotics, Vol. 105, Pg. 123-136, Springer 2015
[Link] | [bib]
"Kinematic Analysis of Quadrotors with Manufacturing Errors,"
Y. Mulgaonkar, C. Powers and V. Kumar,
Mechanisms and Machine Science : Advances in Mechanisms, Robotics and Design Education and Research. Vol. 14, Pg. 205-214, Springer 2013
[Link] | [bib]

Invited Talks / Seminars

"A Swarm of Flying Phones,"
G. Loianno, Y. Mulgaonkar and V. Kumar
International Consumer Electronics Show (CES2016), Las Vegas, Nevada. January 2016.
[Video]
"The future of flying robots,"
V. Kumar, Y. Mulgaonkar, S. Liu and G. Loianno
TEDx Penn, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. April 2015.
[Video]
"Smartphones Control Flying Robots,"
G. Loianno, Y. Mulgaonkar and V. Kumar
International Consumer Electronics Show (CES2015), Las Vegas, Nevada. January 2015.
[Video]
"Aerial Robot Swarms,"
V. Kumar and Y. Mulgaonkar,
TEDx Gateway, Mumbai, India. November 2014.
[Video]
"Open-Source, Printable Pico-Quadrotor,"
Y. Mulgaonkar,
Robot Makers, Robotics Science and Systems (RSS), Berkeley, California. July 2014.
[Video]

Workshops / Tutorials

J. Thomas, Y. Mulgaonkar, M. Whitzer and V. Kumar"T3: Kinematics, Dynamics and Control of Quadrotors," ASME 2014 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (ASME-IDETC), August 2014 [Link]

Awards and Honors

Featured on the 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 List, for contributions in the field of Robotics. Forbes Media LLC, NY 2016 [Link]
First Place at the 2014 ASME Student Mechanism and Robot Design Competition (Graduate Robot Division) for "The Pico-Quadrotor: An Autonomous 20g Micro Aerial Vehicle," ASME-IDETC, Buffalo, NY 2014

Conference Proceedings

G. Loianno, Y. Mulgaonkar, C. Brunner, D. Ahuja, A. Ramanandan, M. Chari, S. Diaz and V. Kumar, "SmartPhones Power Flying Robots,” in Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference, Pg. 1256-1263, September 2015, Hamburg, Germany. [Link]
J. Das, G. Cross, C. Qu, A. Makineni, P. Tokekar, Y. Mulgaonkar and V. Kumar "Devices, Systems, and Methods for Automated Monitoring Enabling Precision Agriculture,” in Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), 2015 IEEE International Conference on, Pg. 462-469, August 2015, Gothenburg, Sweden. [Link]
S. Shen, Y. Mulgaonkar, N. Michael, and V. Kumar, "Initialization-free monocular visual-inertial estimation with application to autonomous MAVs,” in Proc. of the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER), Marrakech, Morocco, June 2014.
Y. Mulgaonkar and V. Kumar, "Autonomous charging to enable long-endurance missions for small aerial robots,” SPIE Paper No. 9083-64, in SPIE Defense and Security Symposium, Baltimore, MD, May 2014. (Invited Talk) [Link]
Y. Mulgaonkar, M. Whitzer, V. Kumar (UPenn); B. Morgan, C. M. Kroninger, A. M. Harrington, (U.S. Army Research Lab.), "Power and Weight Considerations in Small, Agile Quadrotors,” in SPIE Paper No. 9083-62, SPIE Defense and Security Symposium, Baltimore, MD, May 2014. (Invited Talk) [Link]
S. Shen, Y. Mulgaonkar, N. Michael, and V. Kumar, "Multi-sensor fusion for robust autonomous flight in indoor and outdoor environments with a rotorcraft MAV,” in Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2014 IEEE International Conference on, Pg. 4974-4981, May 2014. [Link]
A. M. Mehta and D. Rus; K. Mohta, Y. Mulgaonkar, M. Piccoli, and V. Kumar, "A Scripted Printable Quadrotor: Rapid Design and Fabrication of a Folded MAV,” 16th International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR '13), Singapore December 2013. [PDF]
T. Özaslan, S. Shen, Y. Mulgaonkar, N. Michael, and V. Kumar, "Inspection of penstocks and featureless tunnel-like environments using micro UAVs,” In Proc. of the Intl. Conf. on Field and Service Robot., Brisbane, Australia, Dec. 2013.
S. Shen, Y. Mulgaonkar, N. Michael, and V. Kumar, "Vision-based state estimation and trajectory control towards aggressive flight with a quadrotor,” in Proc. of Robotics: Science and Systems, Berlin, Germany, June 2013. [PDF]
S. Shen, Y. Mulgaonkar, N. Michael, and V. Kumar, "Vision-based state estimation for autonomous rotorcraft MAVs in complex environments," in Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2013 IEEE International Conference on Pg. 1758-1764, Karlsruhe, Germany, May 2013. [Link]
N. Michael, S. Shen, K. Mohta, Y. Mulgaonkar, V. Kumar. "Collaborative mapping of an earthquake-damaged building via ground and aerial robots," in Proc. of the Intl. Conf. on Field and Service Robot., Matsushima, Japan, July 2012. Submitted. [Poster Source 1] or [Poster Source 2]

Journal Publications

N. Michael, S. Shen, K. Mohta, Y. Mulgaonkar, V. Kumar, K. Nagatani, Y. Okada, S. Kiribayashi, K. Otake, K. Yoshida, K. Ohno, E. Takeuchi, and S. Tadokoro, "Collaborative mapping of an earthquake-damaged building via ground and aerial robots," in J. Field Robotics, Vol. 29, No. 5, Pg. 832–841, 2012. [PDF] or [Link]
G. Loianno, G. Cross, C. Qu, Y. Mulgaonkar, J. Hesch and V. Kumar"Flying Smartphones: Automated Flight Enabled by Consumer Electronics," in Robotics & Automation Magazine, IEEE , Vol.22, No.2, Pg. 24-32, June 2015 [Link]

Thesis

Y. Mulgaonkar, "Automated Recharging for Persistence Missions with Multiple Micro Aerial Vehicles," Master's Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, May 2012. [PDF] or [Penn Library]

Art Installations

Y. Mulgaonkar, M. Whitzer, T. Pegors and P. Bryan "Your Brain," The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA