REAL PEOPLE/MACHINE MAKER
Robots for All
In Dennis Hong’s laboratory, students explore the frontier between science and science fiction
Hong with his lab’s robotic creations, including a blue-eyed DARwIn
EVERYONE THOUGHT I was crazy. In 2010, I made the miniature humanoid robot DARwIn-OP, and then I made its programming code, blueprints and other information freely available for anyone to read, copy or adapt. My goal was never to patent and sell this robot. It was to expand knowledge. Today, thousands of DARwIns help teach robotic locomotion and autonomous action in labs around the world. Someone even put instructions online for 3D printing your own robot.
My students and I have created some 50 unique robots here at UCLA. Some jump like spiders; others roll like amoebas. We’ve designed robots to fight fires and deliver food to the homeless. ARTEMIS, another creation, was originally the fastest walking humanoid robot in the world. As with DARwIn, we’re making the design of ARTEMIS open source, which will accelerate its development, to hopefully bring us closer to the time when robots can help us in our daily lives.
To do this work, you have to understand mechanics and algorithms—but robotics is so much more than that. It’s also about imagination, storytelling, even beauty. I bring robots into the world not just as machines that do tasks but as companions that inspire wonder—that same wonder I felt seeing Star Wars for the first time. The droids R2-D2 and C-3PO blew my mind as a kid, and now I’m building their descendants.
The 2025 Netflix film The Electric State features a sentient robot, made with CGI. But for press events, the filmmakers wanted a functioning character, an actual robot, so they came to my lab and we made them one. This blurring of the line between robotics and art is what I’m most excited about.
Even though I’m getting older, inside I feel younger than my students. I always tell them that if you’re not working joyfully, you’re not maximizing your potential. —As told to Gregg Segal
Roboticist Dennis Hong, 54, is a professor at the UCLA School of Engineering and director of RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) in Los Angeles.