Speakers Dennis Hong: Roboticist
Dennis Hong is the founder and director of RoMeLa -- a Virginia Tech robotics lab that has pioneered several breakthroughs in robot design and engineering.
Why you should listen to him:
As director of a groundbreaking robotics lab, Dennis Hong guides his team of students through projects on robot locomotion and mechanism design, creating award-winning humanoid robots like DARwIn (Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence). His team is known as RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) and operates at Virginia Tech.
Hong has also pioneered various innovations in soft-body robots, using a “whole-skin locomotion” as inspired by amoebae. Marrying robotics with biochemistry, he has been able to generate new types of motion with these ingenious forms. For his contributions to the field, Hong was selected as a NASA Summer Faculty Fellow in 2005, given the CAREER award by the National Science Foundation in 2007 and in 2009, named as one of Popular Science's Brilliant 10. He is also a gourmet chef and a magician, performing shows for charity and lecturing on the science of magic.
"I still cannot forget the mind-blowing sensation when I first watched the movie Star Wars. I was fascinated by R2D2 and C-3PO. Since then, I decided to become a robot scientist and never changed my mind."Dennis Hong
Quotes by Dennis Hong
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“A blind person driving a vehicle safely and independently was thought to be an impossible task — until now.”
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“Just imagine, in a classroom a teacher writes on the blackboard and a blind student can see what’s written and read using these non-visual interfaces.”
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Dennis Hong: My seven species of robot
- 15:55 Posted: Apr 2010
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Dennis Hong: Making a car for blind drivers
- 09:08 Posted: May 2011
Dennis Hong on the Web
Related Speakers
Conferences
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- TEDxNASA
- TED2011