Just over a year ago, on a pleasant Tuesday afternoon, a second year engineering student walked up to me after my sensor data analytics lecture. The student hesitantly asked me whether I would like to see a video of my lecture that he had recorded using his iPad. A little nervous about how I would look in my professorial avatar, I reluctantly agreed to watch the video expecting my face to be all over it. Alas, my nervousness was misplaced. I was noticeably missing all throughout the video! In fact, the iPad had been strategically placed to record the screen on which I was projecting my code. According to the student, the video helped him and his friends to work their way through the assignments for the class while ensuring that they actually programmed the code themselves. Right there, in that video, was my Aha moment, staring me blatantly in the face.

Immediately after the conversation, I came back to my research lab and emphatically brainstormed with my grad students, the possibility of our research group creating and posting videos online. The result was www.matlabarduino.org; a website dedicated to providing technically rigorous, free of cost, real-time sensor data analytics education. The website and the companion YouTube channel feature high-definition videos that demonstrate the use of MATLAB and Arduino platforms to interface with wired/wireless embedded systems for compelling sensor based real-time applications. The unifying theme for these videos is task of procuring, analyzing, and visualizing real-world data to generate real-time insights that facilitate data-driven decision making.  

The videos have covered technologies that range from inertial sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers to ultrasonic and infrared distance sensors. Environmental sensors such as temperature and Force Sensitive Resistance (FSR) have been covered in great detail. Wireless technologies such as ZigBee (Xbee) and GSM (mobile phones) have been explicated. Other videos dive into the details of Geo-tagged (GPS) sensor data applications. Intuitive and coherent 2D and 3D visualizations of static and real-time data are presented to elucidate sensor measurement and computational concepts. Most recently, we have started producing videos that demonstrate enabling technologies such as the Raspberry Pi and Node.js for the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. 

The viewership has grown at an increasing rate since the beginning of the channel. The website has witnessed approximately 107,500+ views from over 160 countries to date. The United States accounts for almost 25% of the total viewership. Other top countries feature a healthy mix of countries from the Americas, Europe, and Asia. African nations form the lowest viewership for the YouTube channel; this is a cause of concern for us. The Chinese audience remains untapped since YouTube is not available in China at this moment. 

From a viewer engagement perspective, a key challenge faced by online education is the average view duration for a video being shorter than the total length of the video. We face the same challenge with our videos and continue to find innovative solutions to address it. 

The viewer feedback has been generally positive with most users thanking us on the YouTube channel for posting the videos. A significant number of messages request code for the videos. While all the code is displayed in the videos, as a matter of policy, these videos are meant to encourage the audience to create and further curate their own code repository. In the same vein, we encourage the viewers to write their own code. Should the viewers run into technical issues, we provide support to the extent possible. To date, the YouTube channel has witnessed 1600+ subscribers, an indication of growing viewer loyalty. 

A year later, we continue to remain true to our mission of providing our current and future generations of engineers and scientists the support structure and knowledge required to create systems that allow for effective and data-driven decision-making. Happy 1st birthday MatlabArduino.org!

A lot has been written and said about the power of technology in revolutionizing higher education. The web is playing an increasingly important role in democratizing higher education -- providing education to anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere. 

As the barriers to entry for effective education continue to fall, I am pleased to share our new endeavor, www.matlabarduino.org. I launched this website along with my graduate students Chris and Vaishali with a mission and vision to provide high definition YouTube videos that demonstrate the use of two powerful technologies -- Matlab and Arduino -- to perform fundamental engineering tasks across several fields. The unifying theme for these tasks is the idea of procuring, analyzing, and visualizing real-world data to generate real-time insights that facilitate data-driven decision making. 

The idea of creating this website and YouTube channel spawned during one of the several useful conversations that I have had with my second-year engineering students in my 800+ student class on engineering data analytics. For those who are not aware of these two technologies, here's a brief introduction:

Matlab is a software application built by the MathWorks. This technical software features one of the most comprehensive collection of software tools that can be and have been used to solve critical engineering and scientific problems. A large number of students around the world have access to Matlab through their universities and other sources.

Arduino is an open source hardware platform readily available in the market. This platform features a microcomputer chip that can be used to connect to sensors, actuators, and other devices, and create systems that can perform several automated tasks reliably and continually. Being open source, all the board designs and list of materials used to create the boards are freely available. Best of all, the entry level Arduino platforms start from $10. The one that we have selected is the Arduino UNO board. This board costs around $30.

So why combine the two? To an engineer such as myself, this is a match made in heaven. The Arduino board provides a simple and inexpensive method of electronically connecting with a plethora of devices and capture real-world data as and when it is generated. On the other hand, Matlab's raw computational prowess and plethora of sophisticated scientific software libraries allow one to analyze this real world data and convert it into information; information that is rich with actionable insights and qualitative acumen; information that can be used to answer difficult engineering and scientific questions.

The response to this website and the YouTube channel has been very encouraging. In just under 3 months since the launch, we have registered about 1500 video views from 70+ countries. These numbers are only expected to grow with time and more cutting-edge content. The average view duration is very close to the average length of our shorter videos.

As an educator, I strongly believe that as humanity becomes increasingly technological, we must provide our current and future generations of engineers and scientists the support structure and knowledge required to create systems that allow for effective and data-driven decision-making. Matlabarduino.org is a step in this direction. So the next time you have an idea, don't wait; simply 1) Plug an Arduino board to your computer 2) Start Matlab, and 3) Join the fun!

Often times, curiosity drives people to inquire about my robotics research. Mostly, these are people who do not necessarily work in the field of robotics. These include my friends and family (mostly my mom!), my colleagues from different departments, my dentist, my dry cleaner, the cook at one of the lunch trucks that I frequent, and elementary school kids. Of course, I love explaining to them what I do, sometimes at the risk of boring them! While I have several areas of robotics research, one of my favorites is driverless robotic vehicles. 

The robotics community has always had a very progressive view of the future with an intention to create technology that benefits humanity. A few of the best minds in the world work on really hard problems that arise in this field. Somewhere among these rockstars, I humbly play my part in the pursuit of turning science fiction into reality. 

The fruits of the collective labor of this community are extraordinary. For example, in 2011-12, Google demonstrated autonomous ground-based mobility in an urban environment. By August 2012, the Google Driverless Car had logged more than 300,000 miles in the state of California. Sebastian Thrun, the lead developer of the car described the broader impacts of this technology as follows, ``We can reduce traffic accidents by 90%. We can reduce wasted commute time and energy by 90%. We can reduce the number of cars by 90%".  Recently, Newman and others at Oxford University have demonstrated a driverless car with similar capabilities. Several states in the United States have already passed legislation that allow driving licenses being issued to driverless cars. 

During the same period, Kumar and others demonstrated multiple quadrotors operating in an indoor workspace and maintaining formations that translate and rotate with time. This is an example where multiple autonomous vehicles coordinate to achieve a collective task. 

The video shown here is an example of 5 robotic cars navigating along their paths in a cluttered environment while remaining fairly close to each other. These tiny cars use algorithms that I developed as a part of my research for their safe navigation. The most exciting part about my work is that we are not too far from the day when these algorithms will transition from the laboratory environment to commercial driverless vehicles operating in the real world. 

These and many other developments are harbingers of a future where multiple autonomous vehicles will become an all pervasive concept with applications that improve our standard of living and lifestyles. Such vehicles will lead to a reduction in the number of accidents and commute times and improved fuel efficiency. These, in turn, will drive down the cost of public transportation, logistics, and supply chain management, thereby allowing transportation of personnel and goods to previously unreachable locations in record times. 

While exciting, such autonomous vehicle-based applications come with their own challenges. For example, these vehicles may need to plan their motions while in transit and in real-time. This requires their decision-making mechanisms to be dynamic and efficient. There are kinematic challenges as well, e.g. cars cannot slide sideways to parallel park and a fixed-wing aircraft has a nonzero radius. Design limitations such as finite battery and fuel capacity add to the complexity of the situation.

Furthermore, if multiple vehicles are operating in a common workspace (e.g., urban environments, highways, airways), some shared knowledge of their behavior is important. To obtain this knowledge, either one needs to have sensors or the vehicles need to communicate with each other or with central entities that can update other vehicles with the latest information about their intentions as and when needed.

The biggest challenges, however, will be the commercial viability of such vehicles and adoption by the general public. Specifically, we need to address issues of energy efficiency and safety. Efficiency requirements dictate that these vehicles use as little fuel as possible, to travel as far as possible, as quickly as possible.  Safety requirements dictate that these vehicles be capable of avoiding obstacles and not collide with each other. 

Despite all these challenges, the current propensity of innovation in this space points to a future that is indeed bright...and driverless! 

The human body and technology are fascinating, in more ways than one. What is more fascinating, however, are the unique and often inconceivable ways in which they interact. I write this post while lying on my childhood bed in India. The last time I was in this room — and this ingenious enigma called India — was close to 4 years ago.  

And why am I lying on my childhood bed, you may ask? It's because the first feat I managed to accomplish after coming to India after so long, is to lose my balance off a flight of stairs. Like the coyote that is unfailingly caught off-guard in the famous cartoon series The Roadrunner, I took off in to the air and landed right on my tailbone (don’t try to correlate my age with this outdated, yet classic pop culture reference).

For me, this fall was one of my worst nightmares possibly coming true — injuring my back such that I lose my mobility. The pain was unbearable; the people around me were scared (read: my parents), to the point where I had to suck it up, get up, and calm them down. The immediate course of action was a trip to the Emergency Room to get X-rays done.

This seemed reasonable, except that I managed to accomplish this feat the night before the festival of Raksha-bandhan. Without going into the details of the plethora of festivals that India celebrates, I would like to highlight the bottom line — most doctors in this city were out participating in the festivities. It was the equivalent of long weekends in the United States.

The radiology department of the ER closest to mine was functional, however there was only a certified technician there — no doctors. Strange, but true. The technician, who came across as nothing short of an authoritative researcher in the field of radiology, effortlessly imaged my tailbone from more than one angle. 

Looking at the images, he nonchalantly, yet emphatically, proclaimed that there was no bone fracture. While this was the (good) news that I wanted to hear, I demanded that a “REAL” radiologist inspect the images. He looked irritated, perhaps even insulted. He indicated that the radiologist was not going to be in that day. The resulting dismay on my already emaciated face somehow managed to open floodgates of sympathy in his heart.  And that’s when something magical happened.

This technician quickly whipped out his Android smartphone, fired up WhatsApp, took a picture of the computer screen with my X-rays perfectly centered, and sent it off to the radiologist. Apparently, the radiologist was always available on WhatsApp. Within a few minutes, he messaged back that there was no bone fracture — he could only see soft tissue trauma and suggested a medication for reducing the sharp pain. Lock, stock, and barrel — all this using WhatsApp!

I wonder whether the creators of WhatsApp intended for their app to be used for emergency medical care. But this is a classic example where one just never knows how technology will come to the rescue.  While I got lucky in this case, one cannot help but think of the countless scenarios where such clever use of technology can be lifesaving. 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must confess that I often take my body for granted for I conveniently choose to ignore its frailty. As far as technology is concerned, nothing sums up my tendency to take it for granted better than stand-up comedian Louis C.K.’s famous quote about cellphones, “This is what people are like now, they've got their phone, and they're like, 'uhhhh, it won't —' GIVE IT A SECOND! It's going to space. Can you give it a second to get back from space? Is the speed of light too slow for you?"

This was one of those incidents when I was reminded of their true value. I am still in pain, probably for the next few weeks, but at the end of the day, I am just glad that someone out there decided to think on their toes, and of course, use WhatsApp.

As far as the technician was concerned, I gave him the biggest thanks of my life for I was grateful for his ingenuity. And to you, WhatsApp, thank you — you really got my back!