BITS Pilani Prof RK Mittal Keynote Address on Powering Nanorobots at ICARA 2009 New Zealand

PRLog (Press Release) - Feb 20, 2009 -
ICARA 2009 aimed to provide a common forum for researchers, scientists, engineers and practitioners throughout the world to present their latest research findings, ideas, developments and applications in the area of autonomous robotics and agents. The conference also included keynote addresses by eminent scientists as well as special, regular and poster sessions.

The conference had various sessions which included Autonomous Robots and Agents; Biorobotics and Biomechatronics; Multi-Agent Systems; Computational Intelligence: Algorithms and Applications; Vision based measurement and localization; advanced algorithms in robotic systems; recent advances in memetic algorithms for evolutionary optimization; image processing for robotics; navigation, positioning and sensing; embodied artificial intelligence; unmanned vehicle and vehicle tracking; vision applications in robotics; humanoid robots; intelligent data processing for autonomous applications; smart robots; sensors in robotic applications; GA, AI and Adaptive Control in Robotics; mobile robots; modeling, simulation and control in robotics; intelligent and adaptive control in robotics; passive dynamic walking robots; path planning; etc.

The conference had participation of subject experts from USA, Australia, Japan, Korea, Germany, Taiwan, Malaysia, Italy, Canada, Singapore, Iran, China, Israel, Brazil, Poland Spain, Austria and India.

Keeping the Indian flag flying high, in his keynote address on Powering Nanorobots: An Engineering Challenge, Prof RK Mittal from Birla Institute of Technology and Science – BITS Pilani pointed out that Nanorobotics is a fast emerging field of engineering concerned with creating miniaturized robots of the size of few hundred nanometers and below consisting of components of nanoscale or molecular size and with functionalities of their macro-counterparts.

Considering that mechanical motions, chemical transformations etc require energy, Prof Mittal highlighted how the propulsion and energetics aspects represent a serious limitation in nanorobot design and pointed out that while Biologicals in nano-domains can obtain the continuous power supply from surrounding medium, the challenge ahead is to develop a transducer to convert environmental Brownian motion into mechanical energy for internal storage or immediate utilization.

Dr R.K.Mittal is Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science and Deputy Director (Administration) at one among the top ranking universities in India today BITS Pilani which has recently been reaccredited by NAAC with a CGPA of 3.71 out of 4. His teaching and research experience at BITS spans over three decades. He is the founding member of the Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CRIS) created from scratch in 1992 and was its Coordinator until 2000. A team of students under his guidance developed the first humanoid in India, named Acyut, which participated in World RoboGames 2008 held at San Francisco, California, USA.

He was instrumental in establishing BITS Alumni Association (BITSAA) in 1989 and is the President of the BITSAA. With Proud to be BITSian Prof RK Mittal spearheading robotics research as a mission with passion at BITS Pilani, much more is going to be heard in the times to come. Prof RK Mittal can be contacted at Email rkm.bits@gmail.com or rkm@bits-pilani.ac.in