Fellow Feature: Akhil Padmanabha
On using robotics for social good, finding a community of people with passion, and helping children through virtual reality.
Akhil is a current Fung Fellow and mechanical engineering student from San Jose, CA. We were recently able to talk with him about his journey to the Fung Fellowship, and the passions and insight he has developed through his unique experiences.
On his journey to Berkeley
“My journey to Berkeley was a rollercoaster ride, and quite unconventional at each step along the way. During my second year of high school, I went through several severe health challenges, forcing me to switch to homeschooling, where I was unable to take any courses that I didn’t need for high school graduation including any AP and honors courses.
I became severely isolated and I quickly drifted away from my friends and schoolmates, who unfortunately didn’t make an effort to keep in contact. During this time, I became extremely interested in psychology, especially in helping teens going through similar physical, social and mental issues like myself. I ended up scraping together the credits needed for graduation through taking elective courses, and applied to several colleges for psychology on a whim, not expecting to receive admission. After getting into Cal and taking a gap year, I realized I wanted to explore robotics, a prior interest of mine, and decided to pursue Computer Science in the College of Letters & Science, before transferring into the College of Engineering for mechanical engineering in my sophomore year.
On defining experiences of his college career
During my first year at Berkeley, I really wanted to get an internship for the summer as I still didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do in life. I decided to cold email robotics companies and ended up taking an internship offer from a robotics startup named ViaBot. At that time, ViaBot was still in their early stages, working out of a garage in Palo Alto. The team believed in me and listened to my ideas despite my lack of work experience, and additionally, included me in demos for venture capitalists and HAX hardware accelerator events. During the last month of summer, Viabot took me to China to work on the Version 2 bot. At the HAX accelerator office in Shenzhen, I prototyped subsystems for the bot and I also got valuable exposure to other entrepreneurs who showed me that passion and hard work can truly change the world. At the end of the summer, ViaBot offered me a full-time position; after much deliberation, I decided not to take it and to continue college. I am truly thankful to the team for giving me this amazing opportunity. Over the course of the summer, ViaBot fostered a great environment where I gained confidence in myself and my skills. This experience made me certain about pursuing mechanical engineering and entrepreneurship.
“I also got valuable exposure to other entrepreneurs who showed me that passion and hard work can truly change the world.”
On his passion for tackling social isolation
Social isolation is an often-overlooked condition in health and wellness that I am extremely passionate about. In ninth grade, my friend and I created a website to tackle isolation in senior citizens for the California State Science Fair. However looking back, I don’t think I truly understood social isolation until tenth grade when I went through many health challenges, as I mentioned. In all honesty, the isolation was the worst part of those years. Since then, I have been extremely passionate about tackling the problem and working towards innovative solutions.
I have started to explore social isolation through a project I’m leading named Teleport. The project aims to provide children in hospitals with a social experience using virtual reality and robotics. Through the use of a 3D printed avatar which will be the child’s eyes, ears, and presence, Teleport will allow a sick child to virtually attend a live event of their interest. Last year, I formed a team with the help of Extended Reality at Berkeley (XR@B), received a monetary grant from 3DHubs and a resource award from the Berkeley Impact Venture Partners, explored some industry and hospital partnerships and created a prototype of the avatar.
On the Fung Fellowship
I resonate with the [work of the] Fung Fellowship in many ways, but here are my top three reasons.
First, the Fung Fellowship consistently excites me as it is at the intersection of health and technology, an area that I am extremely passionate about due to my experiences in high school. At Cal, I have gained a large amount of useful theoretical knowledge but I’ve been unable to apply a lot of it. The Fung Fellowship allows me to apply and build my design skills while innovating, helping individuals and impacting communities.
Second, before starting at Berkeley, I thought that it would be easy to find other students with passion in similar areas as me. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this community until this year when I joined the Fellowship. Everyone is super passionate and puts a lot of work into the design challenges due to their own internal drive to do social good.
Lastly, I was extremely excited when the course staff announced that we would be tackling social isolation for this school year as I [identify] greatly with this topic.
“The Fung Fellowship consistently excites me as it is at the intersection of health and technology, an area that I am extremely passionate about due to my experiences.”
On his involvement in other campus activities
From the start of my time here at Berkeley, I wanted to get ingrained in robotics on campus. In my freshman year, I joined RoboBears, a club that primarily builds combat robots. During the year, I managed to design and build a 3lb robot and compete at the International Robogames Competition. As President of the club last year, I worked extensively to revamp the club, including starting the Cal Combat Robotics Competition on campus which was attended by several colleges including UCLA and University of Colorado, Boulder. This year I’m advising the club, which is now holding a competitive combat robotics decal.
I also conduct research at the Robotics and AI Lab (RAIL) lab on campus under Professor Sergey Levine. My research is primarily on designing and manufacturing tactile sensors for robotic manipulation. I specifically work on gelsight sensors, which consist of a silicone gel and camera that capture images of deformations on the surface of the gel from objects the sensor is in contact with. The images from the sensor can then be used in conjunction with machine learning algorithms to infer various state information including forces, material hardness, texture, etc. My graduate student, Frederik Ebert, and I were able to make huge progress over the summer and we recently submitted our paper on a novel omnidirectional gelsight sensor to the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
On his hope for making an impact in the future
Due to my health and career experiences, I’m really passionate about using robotics for social good. I’ve recently been getting more interested in social robotics and assistive robotics as they become more commercially viable. I really like having ownership of the projects that I work on, which makes me quite inclined to pursue my own ideas through a startup. In the future, I want to use my knowledge of robotics to help often overlooked groups such as chronically-ill children and adults.”
Connect with Akhil.
Fellow Features is a series dedicated to showcasing the Fung Fellowship community and learning more about their lives and their stories. If you’re interested in being featured, email funginstitute@berkeley.edu!
Learn more about the Fung Fellowship at fungfellows.berkeley.edu.
