Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Jason Lum’s research career is defined by a relentless drive to make autonomous robotics smaller, smarter, and more accessible. His work spans three critical domains: cost-effective navigation, intuitive human-robot interaction, and compact autonomy for constrained environments. Lum’s most influential contribution, “Accurate Waypoint Navigation using Non-Differential GPS” (2002, 45 citations), challenged the prevailing reliance on expensive differential GPS and inertial systems, demonstrating that robust land-based navigation could be achieved with far simpler hardware—a breakthrough that lowered the barrier for field robotics. He further advanced human-robot collaboration by developing a wireless data glove for gesture-based robotic control (2009, 23 citations), enabling operators to command machines with natural hand movements. A key theme in his work is miniaturization; his 2005 paper on advances in small UGV autonomy (13 citations) tackled the size, weight, and power constraints that had previously limited autonomous capabilities to large platforms. Notably, Lum contributed to NASA’s Astrobee program, co-authoring the 2015 paper on its avionics and perching systems (12 citations), which introduced a free-flying robot designed to automate routine tasks aboard the International Space Station. Through these achievements, Lum has consistently proven that impactful autonomy does not require the biggest sensors—just the smartest engineering.