I am a robotics engineer with 20+ years of experience in the field, both as an industry project lead and an award-winning researcher at MIT and Rice University. I’m a thought leader in multi-robot systems, having led engineering teams in building 2 different swarms with 100+ robots each. My interests are broad; but I’m only happy working on challenging projects involving electrical/mechanical/computational integration. I’m at Google now, developing cool new gizmos, returning to my roots as a hardware engineer.
You can learn more about my previous work as director of the Rice Multi-Robot Systems Lab here: http://mrsl.rice.edu/
Recent research projects include using distributed computational geometry for multi-robot configuration estimation and control, distributed multi-robot manipulation, and deploying physical data structures for computation on multi-robot systems. Previous positions include lead research scientist at iRobot corporation, where McLurkin was the manager of the DARPA-funded Swarm project. Results included the design and construction of 112 robots and distributed configuration control algorithms, including robust software to search indoor environments. I hold a S.B. in Electrical Engineering with a Minor in Mechanical Engineering from M.I.T., a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley, and a S.M. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from M.I.T.
Prototype Online: Inventive Voices podcast featuring a 2006 interview with James McLurkin – From the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation website.
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