Ajinkya Y. Bhave

Carnegie Mellon Innovations Lab
Director of Operations

Biography

Ajinkya Y. Bhave is currently a Doctoral candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), having completed his Masters from the Robotics Institute (RI), both at Carnegie Mellon University. He co-founded the Carnegie Mellon Innovations Laboratory (CMIL) and is in-charge of its organisational and functional activities as the Deputy Director of Operations. At both NASA Ames Research Center and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), he has been a core team member on key projects involving low-cost, high-performance mobile robots, intelligent, plug and play avionics and distributed control systems.

Ajinkya is co-inventor of and lead software architect for the patent-pending MAX platform, a low-cost, compact, all-terrain mobile robot platform created at Carnegie Mellon University. Finished prototypes of this platform are already in use at NASA Ames and NASA JPL as research test beds for NASA-relevant technologies. Educational versions of MAX are being used in universities in the USA and India as innovative teaching tools to excite students about robotics, science, and engineering. 

Ajinkya is a founding member of the Robotics Research Laboratory at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) at Hyderabad in India. He played the role of Director during the Lab’s formative years in 2004 and early 2005 and is now Visiting Faculty there. The IIIT is an autonomous Centre of Excellence in IT research and education, set up in 1998 in association with the Government of Andhra Pradesh, India, NASSCOM, and global leaders in the Indian IT industry. The mission of the Institute is to create technologies as well as technologists to transform India into a superpower in Information Technology. The Corporate Schools of major IT companies like IBM, Motorola, Oracle, Satyam and Signal Tree located on the campus provide access to their cutting-edge technology through specialized academic courses and internships. The Indian National Institute for Smart Governance and the Institute for e-Governance (Andhra Pradesh) both have an active collaboration with the IIIT.

Ajinkya was Academic Advisor for the first batch of Robotics graduate students at IIIT. His work included conducting multiple Robotics projects and courses and overseeing student thesis and research work. He was also an Educational Mentor for the Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) engineering program, a state-wide initiative by the Government of Andhra Pradesh to create the next generation of Indian IT specialists.

Ajinkya’s extensive experience in Educational Robotics includes designing low-cost, mobile robot platforms and leading teams to create embedded robotic software. He has been actively involved in creating innovative ‘Learning-by-Doing’ courses on mobile robotics, using both traditional and online teaching formats. His core contributions have resulted in a self-contained, project-based, mobile robot course that is currently being offered at the Robotics Institute. Ajinkya has also been part of the more traditional Robotic Autonomy courses offered at Carnegie Mellon West since 2002, in collaboration with the NASA Ames Educational Division. Most recently, he worked as a Principal Investigator for the NASA Robotics Academy, an intensive resident summer program for college, undergraduate and graduate students interested in pursuing professional and leadership careers in robotics-related fields.

Ajinkya’s research interests include embedded and real-time systems, distributed control systems, mobile and educational robotics and artificial intelligence.