Vijay Kumar (roboticist)

Vijay Kumar (born 1962 in India) is an Indian-American engineer known for research in robotics, particularly aerial robots and multi-robot systems. He earned a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and a Master of Science and PhD, completed in 1987, from Ohio State University. He joined the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Mechanical Engineering faculty in 1987, moved to its Department of Computer and Information Science in 1989, and became a full professor of mechanical engineering and applied mechanics in 1997, later holding the UPS Foundation professorship at Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science and becoming its dean on July 1, 2015. His GRASP laboratory research has included an all-terrain wheelchair and stair-climbing robots designed for firefighters and bomb disposal squads, alongside foundational work in robot kinematics and mechanical design. He received a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1991, the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1996, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2013 and the American Philosophical Society in 2018, and received the IEEE Robotics and Automation Award in 2020.