Open positions! The TRACE lab has two open Ph.D. positions! See Team for details.

News!

• Falak Mandali joins the TRACE Lab as a thesis-track M.S. student! (01/2025)

• Chee Ying (Ludwig) Tay, SeungJae (Andy) Lim, Annalise Baniecki, Samarth Prashanth, and Bernd Gutschi join the TRACE Lab as undergraduate researchers! (01/2025)

• Leo Benaharon, Kabir Malik, and Joshua Jiaxuan Fan  join the TRACE Lab as undergraduate researchers! (08/2024)

• Advait Jawaji joins the TRACE Lab as a thesis-track M.S. student! (08/2024)

• Muqun Hu joins the TRACE Lab as a Ph.D. student! (07/2024)

• Lokesh Sriram joins the TRACE Lab as an undergraduate researcher! (06/2024)

• Our group presents and shows demos at the Robotic and Intelligent Systems Expo (RISE) hosted by the Autonomous Robotics Club (ARC) of Purdue and Institute for Control, Optimization and Network (ICON)! (03/2024)

• Purdue has her first Humanoid Robot Club now! (02/2024)

• Our ICRA 2024 workshop proposal "From Human Motion Understanding to Humanoid Locomotion" has been accepted! (12/2023)

• Dr. Yan Gu presents at the Humanoids 2023 workshop on "Generalizable and Robust Decision Making, Planning, and Control for Humanoid Loco-Manipulation". (12/2023)

• Zenan and Zijian presented posters at IROS 2023 in Detroit, MI. (10/2023)

• Dr. Yan Gu presents at the IROS 2023 workshop on "Reactive and Predictive Humanoid Whole-body Control". (10/2023)

• ​Dr. Yan Gu receives the ONR YIP Award! (09/2023)

• Our Humanoids 2023 workshop proposal "Generalizable and Robust Decision Making, Planning, and Control for Humanoid Loco-Manipulation" has been accepted! (09/2023)

• Dr. Yan Gu presents at Purdue's ICON seminar series. The seminar recording is available at https://youtu.be/Vbgx3DObObw?feature=shared. (09/2023)

• Andrew Donis joins the TRACE Lab as an undergraduate researcher! (09/2023)

• Magnus-Tryggvi Kosoko-Thoroddsen join the TRACE Lab as a thesis-track M.S. student! (08/2023)

• I-Chia Chang and Wenxi Chen join the TRACE Lab as Ph.D. students! (08/2023)

• Jia (Jason) Xie joins the TRACE Lab as an undergraduate researcher! (06/2023)

• Yuan Gao (virtually) and Amir Iqbal present at AIM2023 in Seattle, WA. (06/2023)

• ​Amir Iqbal presents at ACC2023 in San Diego, CA. (06/2023)

• Our IROS 2023 workshop proposal "Reactive and Predictive Humanoid Whole-body Control" has been accepted! (05/2023)

• Check out the Medium article, Robots Get Their Sea Legs, about our research on dynamic surface locomotion (written by Purdue Engineering)! (01/2023)

• Advait Jawaji, Brendan Duffy, Dilara Baysal, Russell Black, and Will Mortley join the TRACE Lab as undergraduate researchers! (01/2023)

• Zijian He and Ruochen Wang join the TRACE Lab as Ph.D. students! (01/2023)

• Congrats to Leo Liu for winning the R H. William Bottomley Research Scholarship for the Spring 2023 semester! (01/2023)

• Leo Liu joins the TRACE Lab as an undergraduate researcher! (10/2022)

• Dr. Yan Gu joins the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. (07/2022)

• Dr. Yan Gu presents at the "National Workshop on Human-Like Robots" in Washington, D.C.. (07/2022)

• Yuan Gao and Zenan Zhu give virtual talks at  IEEE/ASME AIM 2022. (07/2022)

• Dr. Yan Gu presents at the RSS 2022 Workshop "The Science of Bumping into Things: Towards Robots That Aren't Afraid of Contact" in New York City, NY. (07/2022)

• Dr. Yan Gu presents at the ACC 2022 Workshop "Towards Safe Legged Locomotion in Complex Environments: Learning, Estimation, Planning, and Autonomy" in Atlanta, GA. (06/2022)

• Amir Iqbal and Yuan Gao give talks at  Dynamic Walking 2022 in Madison, WI. (06/2022)

• Zenan Zhu presents a poster at the  IEEE ICRA 2022 workshop "Online Machine Learning-based Control of Lower-limb Exoskeletons" in Philadelphia, PA. (05/2022)

• Stephen Misenti joins the TRACE Lab as an M.S. student! (01/2022)

• Caroline Bisio, Cyrus Ghobani, Due Phan, and Aaron Soibelman join the TRACE Lab as undergraduate researchers! (01/2022)

• Our ACC 2022 Workshop proposal "Towards Safe Legged Locomotion in Complex Environments: Learning, Estimation, Planning, and Autonomy" has been accepted! (01/2022)

• Dr. Yan Gu receives a grant as a co-PI from U.S. Army DEVCOM Soldier Center with Dr. Murat Inalpolat (lead). (08/2021)

• ​​Luisa Matos, Emmanual Aybar Estrella, Chengyue (James) Li, Daniel Germán George, and Richard Kumahia join the TRACE Lab as undergraduate researchers! (06/2021)

• Dr. Yan Gu receives a grant as a co-PI from Office of Naval Research with Drs. Holly Yanco (lead), Paul Robinette, and Reza Ahmadzadeh. (06/2021)

• Our IROS 2021 Workshop proposal "Impact-Aware Robotics" has been accepted! (05/2021)

• ​Dr. Yan Gu receives the NSF CAREER Award.​ (03/2021)

• Our ACC 2021 Workshop proposal "Fielding Legged Robotics off the Beaten Path" has been accepted! (01/2021)

• Kentaro Barhydt joins the TRACE Lab as a Visiting Researcher! (11/2020)

• Dr. Yan Gu receives a grant as a co-PI from NSF CHS with Drs. Holly Yanco (lead at UML), Pei-Chun Kao, and Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio (lead at Yale). (10/2020)

• Zenan Zhu joins the TRACE Lab as a Ph.D. student! (09/2020)

• Congrats to ​Amir Iqbal and Yuan Gao for winning the Best Student Paper Finalist at AIM 2020! (07/2020)

• Dr. Yan Gu is interviewed by NPR's wbur about potential uses of robotics in meeting workforce needs under the pandemic. (06/2020)

• Our lab has a Youtube channel now. (05/2020)

• Our paper and invited session proposal have both been accepted by AIM 2020. (05/2020)

• Our two papers have been accepted by ACC 2020. (01/2020)

• Dr. Yan Gu receives a grant as a co-PI from U.S. Army DEVCOM Soldier Center. (10/2019)

• Dr. Yan Gu gives an invited talk at the ACC 2019 workshop on "Challenges and Solutions for Legged Robotics". (07/2019)

• Dr. Yan Gu receives a sole-PI grant from NSF DCSD. (07/2019)

• Our two papers on legged locomotion control have been accepted by DSCC 2019. (06/2019)

• Our research on using 5G to remotely control legged robots is now reported in Boston Globe, CNET, Robotics Business Review, and NPR's wbur. (05/2019)

• Dr. Yan Gu receives the Excellence in Teaching Award at UMass Lowell. (05/2019)

• We participated in this year's Botfest. Our little robot, Darwin, made some cool friends today! (04/2019)

• We demonstrate our research on 5G-enabled legged robot teleoperation at Verizon's 5G lab in Cambridge, MA. (04/2019)

• ​Our paper and invited session proposal on legged locomotion control have both been accepted by American Control Conference. (02/2019)

• ​​Zenan Zhu joins the TRACE Lab as an M.S. student. (02/2019)

• Our group receives an award from Verizon and Ericsson to further our participation in  MassTLC 5G Robotics Challenge! Congratulations to Dr. Holly Yanco's research group for winning two awards in the challenge! (02/2019)

• Dr. Yan Gu receives a grant as a co-PI from U.S. Army DEVCOM Soldier Center. (02/2019)

• ​The undergraduate research team supervised by Drs. Yan Gu, Yi-Ning Wu (Physical Therapy), and Holly Yanco (Computer Science) has won the 2nd place and the People's Choice Award in the DifferenceMaker® Francis College of Engineering Prototyping Competition at UMass Lowell! Congratulations to ​​Nick Deane (ME), Kevin Truong (ME), ​​Dan Garfinkel (ME), Pat Pang (PT), Alex Infantino (CS), Matt Barr (ME), Dennon Audette (ME), ​​​Mike Hoppe (ME), and Joe McDonald (ME)! (12/2018) 

• ​​Amir Iqbal joins the TRACE Lab as a Ph.D. student! (08/2018)

• ​​Alexander M. Barr joins the TRACE Lab as an undergraduate researcher! (08/2018)

• The Capstone senior design team supervised by Dr. Yan Luo and Dr. Yan Gu has won the 1st place in the Symbotic Utility Bot Competition! Congratulations to ​​​​Ciro OrigiRohr (ECE), Travis Kessler (ECE), Chunlong Huang (ME), John Wheeler (ME), and ​Stephen Halas (ECE)! (05/2018)

• Yuan Gao joins the TRACE Lab as a Ph.D. student! (02/2018)
• Dr. Yan Gu joins the Mechanical Engineering Department at UMass Lowell as an Assistant Professor. (09/2017)

TRACE Lab 
School of Mechanical Engineering
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN 47907