Event Details

October 23, 2026

Join Zoom Webinar

Host: Steve Crago
POC: Amy Kasmir

Algorithms for mobile robotic systems are generally implemented on purely digital computing platforms. As complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) scaling approaches the end of the road, the improvement of the throughput of digital processors and computing power efficiency is nearing its end. This issue not only affects the power requirements of large data centers but also limits the performance of mobile robotic systems with perception and actuation. Developing alternative computational platforms may lead to more energy-efficient and responsive mobile robotics.

Inspired by how human and animal brains work, we report a hybrid analog-digital computing platform enabled by memristors on mobile robots. The “cerebellums” (sensor fusion + motion control) of mobile robotic systems are implemented in memristor-based analog circuits, and the rest of the system is implemented in digital circuits. Such a platform can perform computation in the analog domain and thus removes the speed and energy efficiency bottleneck. The robot using the hybrid analog-digital platform demonstrated dramatic enhancement of speed and energy efficiency over the traditional digital platform.

Speaker Bio

Wei Wu graduated from Peking University with a BS in Physics in 1996 and received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 2003. He is a Professor at the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California. Before joining USC in 2012, he had worked as a research associate, scientist, and senior scientist at HP Labs. His work includes nanoimprint lithography and applications in nano-electronics, nano-photonics, plasmonics, chemical sensing, and nano-electrochemical cells. He co-authored 128 peer-reviewed scientific journal papers with 15,056 citations, 2 book chapters, and more than 150 conference presentations, including 16 keynote and invited presentations. He has 122 granted US patents. Half of them were also filed internationally. His H-index is 59. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He is a co-editor of Applied Physics A and an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology. He was also an IEEE Nanotechnology Council 2015 and 2016 distinguished lecturer and a recipient of the USC Stevens Center for Innovation Commercialization Award 2020.