Aaron Johnson
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Courtesy Appointments, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Robotics Institute
Aaron Johnson researches how to design intelligent interactions between a robot and its environment with a focus on taking robots out of the lab and factory and into the real world. His interests include novel robot design, behavior design, controller design, platform design, as well as dynamic transitions, contact, physics-based planning, bio-inspired robotics, robot vision, actuator modeling, and robot ethics. He has tested his robots in the Mojave desert, power plants, a coal mine, and on various military bases.
Johnson received his B.S. in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon (2008). He received his Ph.D. in electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania (2014), and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Personal Robotics Lab, the Robotics Institute, at CMU. He was formerly a visiting researcher with Boston Dynamics, an electrical engineering Intern at iRobot, and a research assistant with the Biorobotics Lab (Snake Robot Lab) at CMU.
Johnson’s work has been featured in many news stories, including interviews with the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal, and in articles on technology news sites, including IEEE Spectrum, Gizmodo, Wired, and Engadget. He received an NSF CAREER Award in 2020 and a Young Investigator Award from the Army Research Office in 2019. He was a Best Student Paper Finalist at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in 2013, and at the Climbing and Walking Robots Conference in 2012. He received the David Thuma Laboratory Project Award in 2008 from CMU and an honorable mention for the Computing Research Association’s Outstanding Undergraduate Award in 2008.
Robots That Can Go Anywhere in the World
24-775 Robot Design and Experimentation: Student Projects
Education
2014 Ph.D., Electrical & Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania
2008 BS, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
Media mentions
ASME Dynamic Systems & Control Division Podcast Series
Johnson interviewed on robotics
MechE’s Aaron Johnson was interviewed by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Dynamic Systems & Control Division Podcast Series about his work on legged robots.
2021 Engineering faculty award winners selected
Congratulations to the 2021 CMU Engineering Faculty Awards winners.
IEEE Spectrum
Johnson’s research on aerodynamic robotic tails featured
MechE’s Aaron Johnson's robotics research on the aerodynamics of cheetah tails was featured in IEEE Spectrum.
Inceptive Mind
Johnson’s robot research featured
MechE’s Aaron Johnson and his team’s robotic research was featured on Inceptive Mind.
CMU Engineering
Tailing new ideas
Aaron Johnson’s Robomechanics Lab is looking to nature for robotic tail designs that make orientation tasks easier for moving robots.
VentureBeat
Johnson mentioned on remote robotic course
MechE’s Aaron Johnson was mentioned in VentureBeat on how his robotics course adjusted to online class during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mechanical Engineering
Reassess, recalibrate, and transform
Mechanical Engineering students and faculty adapted with innovation and agility to finish the spring 2020 semester during the COVID-19 pandemic.
IEEE Spectrum
Johnson’s robot design course featured in IEEE Spectrum
MechE’s Aaron Johnson’s Robot Design and Experimentation course was featured in an IEEE Spectrum article highlighting how roboticists (and their robots) have been working from home. Despite turning remote, none of the teams changed their projects.
CMU Engineering
Making tracks in the desert
Catherine Pavlov, a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering, traveled to the Atacama Desert to conduct experiments she modeled that aim to gain non-grasping functionality from space rovers.
Future Tech Podcast
Johnson on designing robots that meet the challenges of the real world
MechE’s Aaron Johnson was interviewed on the Future Tech Podcast. Johnson’s work focuses on the interactions between a robot and its specific environment. In this podcast, he elaborates on the complex environments in which robots are expected to flourish.
National Institute of Aerospace
CMU team joined the 2019 NASA Moon to Mars Ice and Prospecting Challenge
In June, a group of CMU College of Engineering students joined eight other institutions for the third NASA Moon to Mars Ice and Prospecting Challenge at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
IEEE Spectrum
Students build climbing robot in Bioinspired Robotics course
One project from MechE’s Aaron Johnson’s bioinspired robotics course was a new version of the Rhex robot called T-Rhex, created by Team ScienceParrot. With tapered toes made of microspines, the T-Rhex can grip multiple surfaces and climb slopes up to 55 degrees, as well as hang from a vertical wall.