Santosh Devasia

Biography

Santosh Devasia is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle where he joined in 2000. He directs the Precision Controls Laboratory. From 2017-2022, he served as the Director of the Boeing Advanced Research Center at the University of Washington, which focuses on the manufacturing and assembly of aircraft and spacecraft structures. As the founding Director of the Advanced Composites Center at the University of Washington from 2019-2022 he developed an academia/industry/government collaboration and raised funding for the initial major equipment and facilities development for the center including the Robotic Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) system. He served as the Associate Dean of Research and Faculty Affairs in the College of Engineering at the UW, Seattle from 2014-17. He received his B.Tech. (Hons) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, in 1988, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1990 and 1993 respectively. His current research interests include theory for iterative learning, information propagation for distributed systems, and their applications in human-machine interaction, manufacturing, and robotics. He is a fellow of the ASME and IEEE societies.

Education

• Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara
• M.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Bachelor of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India

Research Statement

Santosh Devasia's current research interests include: iterative control and its application to human-machine interaction; distributed systems, manufacturing and robotics; and biomedical applications such as mixing and separation with soft actuators.

For an overview of his current research projects, visit his faculty website.

Select publications

1. L. Yan, and S. Devasia. “Output-Sampled Model Predictive Path Integral Control (o-MPPI) for Increased Efficiency” 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 13-17 May, 2024, Yokohama, Japan, https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA57147.2024.10611180
2. L. Yan and S. Devasia. “What observables are needed for Precision Data-enabled Learning of Inverse Operators?” ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control, p 1-18, paper # DS-23-1070, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4064655
3. Y. Gombo, A. Tiwari, M. Safwat, H. Chang, and S. Devasia. “Delayed Self-Reinforcement to Reduce Object Deformation during Decentralized Flexible-Object Transport,” IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), Vol 40, pp. 999-1018, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1109/TRO.2023.3343997
4. A. Tiwari, S. Devasia and J. Riley. “Low distortion information propagation with noise suppression in swarm networks,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), Vol 120(11), e2219948120, pp. 1-11, March 10th, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2219948120
5. Y. Lin, A. Tiwari, B. Fabien, and S. Devasia. “Constant-Spacing Connected Platoons with Robustness to Communication Delays,” IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol 24(3), pp. 3370-3382, Mar. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2022.3224635

Honors & awards

• ASME Henry M. Paynter Outstanding Investigator Award 2024
• ASME Fellow, 2012
• IEEE Fellow, 2019

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