Richard Margolin is the Director of Hardware at Hanson Robotics solving problems in mechanical design, maintenance, 3D laser scanning, software, and robot personality design. Richard has been with Hanson since 2008, starting as an intern he has developed and improved numerous elements of both the HumanKind and RoboKind product line.

Currently a mechanical engineering student at the University of Texas at Arlington where he is also a member of The Manufacturing Automation and Robotic Systems (MARS) Laboratory doing research with industrial manufacturing robots and the Heracleia Laboratory looking at saccade patterns in computer vision and dynamic humanoid walking. . Margolin previously studied neuroscience at Trinity College and served as an intern at U.T. Southwestern Biotech and Informatics and at the UTD Nanotech Institute.

While at the University of Texas at Arlington, Richard founded to UTA chapter of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI@UTA). This group has grown in membership and has started projects which include a Xylophone which will eventually be able to play music with another musician and learn to improvise. The group has also started an Infinite Mario team, a path planning competition with a goal of letting the AI play a Mario Brother’s level which is infinite in length and randomized.

As a senior Mechanical Engineering student, Richard has been the team leader for his Senior Design Project. Leading a group of six in the design and creation and prototyping of a robotic mechanism which can actuate multiple degrees of freedom simultaneously and independently using a single motor. See The Senior Design Project Page.