Dan Zhao

Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering (2021)

Senior Control Engineer in XPENG Robotics

Education

B.S.M.E Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, 2014
M.S. Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Micghian, 2019
PhD. Mechanical Engineering, University of Micghian, 2021.

danzhaoy[at]umich[dot]edu.

My research interests and projects include two parts.

First, design of a very low cost hexapedal robot which can be fabricated very fast, but still with decent performance as a legged robot such as walking, running, steering on even and rough terrain, climbing stairs, etc. Second, modeling hexapedal robot to understand multilegged locomotion, especially the study of how to steer a hexapedal robot.

Here is BigAnt, a cheap hexpedal robot made of foam boards and takes less than 8 hours to build.


Here is steering of Mechapod on different surfaces, low friction vs high friction.