Daniel M. Aukes, PhD
danaukes@asu.edu
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Daniel M. Aukes is an Associate Professor at Arizona State University, and is the Principal Investigator of the IDEAlab. His research investigates the nexus of design, manufacturing, and data-driven decision-making towards the development of robots that can operate in niche environments, with a focus on affordability and accessibility. He is a former Technology Development Fellow at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and completed post-doctoral research in the Harvard MicroRobotics Lab with Rob Wood, developing manufacturing planning software for origami-inspired robots. Dr. Aukes received his PhD and Masters degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, studying the design of underactuated robotics hands under Mark Cutkosky. He received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University. Dr. Aukes’s industry experiences have focused on manufacturing automation across a wide range of industries including automotive, pharmaceutical, and food-processing.
Dr. Aukes’ current research includes origami-inspired design techniques, foldable robots, mobile robots, rapid prototyping, device design, dynamics and simulation, and manufacturing planning
Research Interests
Dr. Aukes’ research topics include design, manufacturing, mechatronics, kinematics, dynamics and simulation of robots.
Teaching
Dr. Aukes has developed a number of courses from scratch, including
- Foldable Robotics: A graduate-level course that teaches the design and analysis of foldable mechanisms, digital manufacturing, physical modeling and design optimization from the perspective of project-based applications where students design, build, validate, and improve their own robots.
- Experimentation and Deployment of Robotic Systems: This course teaches about communication, sensing, data visualization, experiment design, computer vision, neural networks, and more. The course is centered around developing data-driven decision making pipelines on real robotic systems using ROS2.
- Flexible Robotics: An undergraduate version of Foldable Robotics, with an emphasis on compliant systems, manual fabrication, and accessible modeling approaches via off-the-shelf physics engines.
- Informal Robotics: a course originally developed by Chuck Hoberman, Dan Aukes, and Jonathan Grinham at the Harvard University graduate school of design. Focused on the iterative process of designing robotic systems made possible by “informal” materials. This course was the progenitor of the engineering-focused “Foldable Robotics”.
Dr. Aukes also frequently teaches
- Embedded Systems Design Project I & II: This is a 3rd year course sequence that takes students through the design, build, test process for embedded systems. Students work in project teams to create user-centered designs that address a given need, with a focus on circuit design and debugging, PCB fabrication, microcontroller-level programming, analog and serial sensing, serial communication, and more.