Education
Ph.D. , Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, 2022
B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, 2017
Research Interests
Zach Patterson's current overarching research thrust is to develop robot systems that can operate with stronger safety guarantees in sensitive settings. Most work on this topic currently focuses on algorithmically guaranteed safety. While Zach works in this area, the basic physical properties of the robot ultimately provide constraints on what safety means and how strict the algorithm must be. Therefore, he is building robots that are designed with these algorithms in mind in order to maximize their effectiveness. The end goal is to create robots that, like humans, are not afraid of bumping into the world in unexpected ways.
