Biography

Akshay Vaidya is a PhD candidate in the RIVeR lab. Akshay’s research focuses on various topics ranging from robotics, optimization and additive manufacturing.

Akshay’s primary research focuses on leveraging robotics for additive manufacturing. Specifically, using a cold spray system coupled with a 6 DOF robotic arm to generate accurate and high-quality sprays. The goal is to determine complex robotic paths using optimization techniques to generate dimensionally accurate parts.

In addition, Akshay’s secondary projects focus on assisting the design and manufacturing of soft robotic grippers. This work focuses on utilizing spectroscopy for multimodal sensing.

Fun fact: When Akshay was 8 years old, they had lunch stolen by a group of monkeys while on vacation.

Publications

• A Soft Durometer for Tactile Sensing

• In-Hand Object Recognition with Innervated Fiber Optic Spectroscopy for Soft Grippers