Sangbae's CV

   Name: Sangbae Kim
   Email : sangbae@stanford.edu
   Ph.D Candidate
   Biomimetic & Dexterous Manipulation Lab
   Mechanical engineering department
   Stanford University

   Profession: Biomimetic Designer

"Design is a series of mental processes of defining and solving problems via creation. "    -Sangbae Kim

In 2003 spring, ME310 class went a picnic to Half moon bay and Prof. Cutkosky invented a sort of miniature design competition. The rule is that team who makes the highest structure wins using material in the beach and scissors and thread. I asked "Would a kite be considered as a 'Structure'?" We built a kite out of feathers of seagull and plastic bag and our team won the game..
  The word 'design' is widely understood as 'artistic design' and   'Design' in engineering also likely represents solving specific engineering problem such as calculating beam thickness. What I want to picture by 'design' is broader concept that  includes every mental process required to solve problems redefine problem from the outside of the box. Rather than being a designer who design a component that is a part of problem, I desire to be a designer who defines problems and solves in a bigger picture.

Sangbae is......

Sangbae Kim received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea in 2001. He joined a startup company, Solutionix(solutionix.com), in Seoul, where developed mechanical systems for 3-D optical scanners. In 2002 he moved to California where he received his M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, specializing in mechatronic systems design. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in the Biomimetic Robotics Laboratory at the Stanford Center for Design Research.

At Stanford, Kim has been the principal designer of several bio-inspired legged robots including iSprawl, a cockroach-inspired hexapod that runs at up to 15 body-lengths/second over rough terrain, Spinybot, an arthropod-inspired robot that climbs vertical outdoor surfaces such as stucco and concrete and Stickybot, a gecko-inspired robot that employs the first synthetic directional dry adhesive pads to climb smooth vertical surfaces such as windows. The design principles behind these robots are described in several publications and three pending patents for which Kim is the primary inventor. A video of Spinybot received the “Best Video” award from among 65 submissions at the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. His latest artwork, Stickybot was one of the BEST INVENTION of 2006 at TIME magazine and his paper about Stickybot received "Best Student Paper Award" and Finalist of "Best Conference Award" at IEEE international conference on Robotics and Automation April 2007 in Rome. His invention of directional adhesion is

Sangbae Kim’s research interests include the design and modeling of compliant under-actuated mechanisms to improve the performance and simplify the control of robots. He is an expert in multi-material rapid-prototyping methods for bio-inspired robotic systems.

Publication

Kim, S., Clark, J.E. and Cutkosky, M.R.,"iSprawl: Design and Tuning for High-speed Autonomous Open-loop Running" International Journal of Robotics Research.

Kim, S., Clark, J.E. and Cutkosky, M.R., “Isprawl : Autonomy, and the Effects of Power Transmission,” Proc. CLAWAR, Madrid, Spain, Sept. 22-24, 2004. (See also the IndependentSprawl page.)

Kim, S., Asbeck, A., Provancher, W., and Cutkosky, M.R., “SpinybotII: Climbing Hard Walls with Compliant Microspines,” IEEE ICAR, Seattle, WA, July, 18-20, 2005.

"BEST STUDENT PAPER AWARD" and "BEST CONFERENCE PAPER FINALISTS"
Kim, S., Spenko, M., Trujillo, S. Heyneman, B., Mattoli, V., Cutkosky, M. R. "Whole body adhesion: hierarchical, directional and distributed control of adhesive forces for a climbing robot" ICRA Rome, Italy, 10-14 April 2007, 1268-1273

Kim, S., Spenko, M., Trujillo, S. Heyneman, B., Santos, D., Cutkosky, M. R. "Smooth Vertical Surface Climbing with Directional Adhesion" IEEE a special issue of transactions on Bio-Robotics

Santos, D., Kim, S., Spenko, M., Parness, A., Cutkosky, M.R., "Directional Adhesive Structures for Controlled Climbing on Smooth Vertical Surfaces" ICRA Rome, Italy, 10-14 April 2007, 1262-1267