Short Bio
Dr. Voyles, the Daniel C. Lewis Professor of the Polytechnic, received the B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue
University in 1983, the M.S. from Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 1989,
and the Ph.D. in Robotics from the School of Computer Science at
Carnegie Mellon University in 1997. He was at the University of Minnesota as
Assistant Professor and then tenured Associate Professor from 1997 - 2007, was tenured Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Denver from 2006 - 2013, NSF Program Director in CISE from 2010 - 2013, Assistant Director of Robotics and Cyber-Physical Systems at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2014 - 2015 and, since 2013, is Professor of Engineering Technology at Purdue University.
He runs the Collaborative Robotics Lab, is Director of the Purdue Robotics Accelerator, and was Site Director of the
NSF Center for Robotics and Sensors for Human Well-Being (RoSe-HUB). He is an IEEE Fellow.
Dr. Voyles' research interests are in the areas of miniature, constrained robots; mobile manipulation; Form + Function 4D Printing; learning from observation; robot-to-robot skill transfer for medical robotics; precision animal agriculture, and haptic sensors and actuators.
Medium Bio
Dr. Voyles, the Daniel C. Lewis Professor of the Polytechnic, received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in 1983, an M.S. in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 1989, and the Ph.D. in Robotics from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in 1997. He is currently Professor of Engineering Technology at Purdue University and an IEEE Fellow. He was a tenured faculty member at the University of Minnesota from 1997 to 2007 and at the University of Denver from 2006 - 2013. He served as lead Program Director for the National Robotics Initiative at NSF and was a co-founder of the NSF Innovation Corps program. He also served as Assistant Director of Robotics and Cyber-Physical Systems at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Dr. Voyles' research interests are in the areas of robotics and artificial intelligence. Specifically, he is interested in the development of small, resource-constrained robots and robot teams for urban search and rescue and surveillance and learning from observation for medical robotics. Dr. Voyles has additional expertise in sensors and sensor calibration, particularly haptic and force sensors, real-time control, Form + Function 4D Printing and precision animal agriculture.
Dr. Voyles' industrial experience includes Dart Controls, IBM Corp., Intergrated Systems, Inc., and Avanti Optics. He has also served on the boards of various start-ups and non-profit groups.
Long Bio
Dr. Richard Voyles, the Daniel C. Lewis Professor of the Polytechnic, has been a researcher, deployer, and advocate for robotics and the internet of things most of his academic and professional life. He is currently professor of robotics in the Polytechnic Institute at Purdue University as well as the founding director of the Purdue Robotics Accelerator and was named a University Faculty Scholar in 2014. He previously served as Assistant Director for Robotics and Cyber-Physical Systems in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, in which he was instrumental in the expansion of the DARPA Robotics Challenge as an international cooperation, advocated for increased funding for robotics and IoT research, and pushed for "filling the gaps" in the educational continuum "from HS to MS," including Engineering Technology. Prior to this, he was lead Program Director at the National Science Foundation running the National Robotics Initiative, was one of the founding Program Directors of the Innovation Corps program, and a Program Director in Cyber-Physical Systems. He leads the Collaborative Robotics Lab, is Director of the Purdue Robotics Accelerator, and was a past Site Director of the NSF Center for Robotics and Sensors for Human Well-Being (RoSe-HUB).
Prof. Voyles' educational background includes the three pillars of robotics -- electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and computer science -- having received the B.S.E.E. from Purdue University in 1983, the M.S.M.S.E. from Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 1989, and the Ph.D. in Robotics from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in 1997. Prof. Voyles' prior appointments have included engineering positions in industry at Dart Controls, IBM, Integrated Systems, and Avanti Optics and tenured positions in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Denver. Dr. Voyles' research interests are in the areas of small, resource-constrained robots and robot teams for urban search and rescue and surveillance, new generations of co-robots for intelligent, human-assistive tasks, such as nuclear clean-up, and intelligent meta-materials that combine sensing, computation and structure. He has founded or served on the boards of several start-ups and also served several non-profit groups with a focus on STEM education.
His professional developments include novel mechanism design including the Scout and CRAWLER (Cylindrical Robot for Autonomous Walking and Lifting during Emergency Response) robots, the Dexterous Hexrotor, and the MOTHERSHIP (Modular Omnidirectional Terrain Handler for Emergency Response, Serpentine and Holonomic for Instantaneous Propulsion) and Super-Baxter robots; software development for self-adaptive systems, including the ReFrESH (REconfigurable FRamework for Embedded Software and Hardware) architecture, Gesture-Based Programming, and Coaching by Demonstration.
Dr. Voyles' industrial experience includes three years with IBM, where he was a manufacturing/test engineer working on robotic automation projects, one and one-half years with Intergrated Systems, Inc., where he was a research scientist working on contracted applications of real-time software, and two years with Avanti Optics developing sub-micron motion control platforms for advanced photonics manufacturing. Dr. Voyles has founded one company, Mark V Automation Corp., and co-founded another, both to address issues in real-time control hardware and software.
Prof. Voyles is a Fellow of the IEEE.
rvoyles [at] purdue [dot] edu