Viktor Orekhov, Phd Email & Phone Number

Falls Church, VA, US

Mclean, VA, US

• DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge
• Served as Technical Lead for the DARPA SubT Challenge, an international robotics competition in which teams developed technologies to rapidly map, navigate, and search underground environments.
• Performed background research, identified technical trends, new concept development, rigorous technical diligence, competition design, proposal reviews, field testing, curation of a cooperative research community.
• Served as Technical Lead for the Service Academies Swarm Challenge (SASC), an aerial swarm vs. swarm competition between three of the military service academies. Responsibilities included coordinating a team of ~30.
• Developed novel research-grade UAVs and payloads to enable state-of-the-art perception research. Responsibilities included building custom airframes, designing custom sensor payloads/gimbals, and integrating flight.
• Researched sensor and optics phenomenology, designed novel low-cost optical sensors, and demonstrated their ability to detect vibrations and underground activity using non-contact optical methods. Set up experiments.

Blacksburg, VA, US

• Dissertation Title: Series Elasticity in Linearly Actuated Humanoids.Research Focus: Designed, fabricated, and implemented series elastic linear actuation in two full size humanoid robots: THOR and SAFFiR.THOR |.
• 1.8m tall disaster response robot developed for the DARPA Robotics Challenge, capable of walking over rough terrain, driving vehicles, and using hand tools.SAFFiR | Shipboard Autonomous Fire Fighting Robot
• 1.5m tall fire-fighting robot developed for Office of Naval Research, capable of navigating through low visibility fire environments and working with a team of human fire fighters.RoboCup | DARwIn & CHARLI
• Member of Team DARwIn (kid-size league) and Team CHARLI (adult-size league) which competed in the 2011 and 2012 RoboCup competitions.
• Both teams won the championship in their leagues both years and CHARLI won the Best Humanoid award in 2011.Whole Skin Locomotion
• Developed the mechanics of a flexible fluid filled robot which uses an everting motion for propulsion and squeezing through holes.

Blacksburg, VA, US

• Revamped and taught a new controls experiment for a senior level course. Active in training and mentoring undergraduate researchers in RoMeLa/TREC each year.

Blacksburg, Virginia, US

• Volunteer Staff - Directing strategy and developing leaders for an organization with 60 active members and 10 leaders.

Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, KR

• Participant in the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes (EAPSI), an NSF sponsored program. Performed collaborative research with the HUBO Lab at KAIST on HUBO, a 1.5m tall humanoid robot.

Cookeville, TN, US

• Along with a teammate I designed and built an autonomous window cleaning robot which won the regional competition.

Cookeville, TN, US

• Part of a 20+ team which built and competed with an off road race car each year.
• Involved in the design and fabrication of many aspects of the 2006, 2007, and 2008 cars.
• Served as design judge and event official at the 2008 competitions.

Cookeville, TN, US

• Various other independent research projects including materials science, nondestructive testing, and fluids research performed at Tennessee Tech and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Philadelphia, PA, US

• NSF sponsored Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program.
• Developed novel variable stiffness legs for RHex using Shape Deposition Manufacturing.

Pittsburgh, PA, US

• Worked on process optimization and quality control in ceramic injection molding.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Phd), Robotics, Autonomy, Controls, Mechanical Engineering

Bachelor Of Science (B.S.), Mechanical Engineering