Publications & Talks

Sharing what I learn

I enjoy building robots, but I also enjoy sharing what I learn from them.

My work has ranged from humanoid robot vision and robotics education to human-centered design through Project Food Angel. I’ve presented it to researchers, students, and the public in four countries: the United States, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Japan.

Ethan speaking at a podium at the Texas A&M Hotel and Conference Center, beside a slide of design questions for Food Angel
Giving the opening banquet talk at UR2025, College Station, Texas.
  • 9publications, including papers, posters, a book chapter, and a book
  • 5as first or sole author
  • 10+talks and presentations, from UCLA to Osaka
Watch

My UR2025 banquet talk

In July 2025 I was invited to give the opening banquet talk at the 22nd International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots in College Station, Texas: “Project Food Angel: A Food Delivery Robot for the Homeless.” Afterward I joined professors and robotics researchers on the panel “Robots with Us.”

UR2025 banquet talkLoading video…

Talks & Presentations

  • Ethan in front of the TEDxManhattanBeach backdrop
    Upcoming · Nov 7, 2026 · Invited talk

    TEDxManhattanBeach

    Project Food Angel, empathy, engineering, and human connection.

    About my talk
  • Ethan presenting the title slide of the Q8bot legged robotics workshop paper at UR2026
    Jul 2026 · Paper presentation

    UR2026 · Osaka, Japan

    “A Co-Designed Legged Robotics Workshop for High School Students Using the Q8Bot Miniature Quadruped.” Co-author and presenter.

  • Ethan explaining his hexapod research poster to visitors, with the six-legged robot beside him
    Oct 2025 · Poster presentation

    SCAIR2025 · Cal Poly Pomona

    “Food Angel 2.0: From Wheels to Legs.” First author and presenter.

  • Ethan speaking on a conference panel alongside three professors, under a slide reading Special panel on robots with us
    Jul 2025 · Invited banquet talk & panel

    UR2025 · College Station, Texas

    Opening banquet talk, “Project Food Angel: A Food Delivery Robot for the Homeless,” and panelist on “Robots with Us.”

  • Ethan presenting to a seated audience, with a slide introducing him as an 11th grader at Geffen Academy and an intern at RoMeLa
    Jul 2025 · Paper presentation

    UR2025 · College Station, Texas

    First-author paper on how data collection methods affect robot soccer vision.

  • Ethan presenting his Food Angel video to visitors at ICRA@40, wearing a conference badge
    Sep 2024 · Video presentation

    IEEE ICRA@40 · Rotterdam, Netherlands

    “Project Food Angel: Development and Preliminary Observations.” Sole author and presenter; IEEE RAS Travel Award recipient.

  • Ethan on stage with a microphone beside a slide titled Project Food Angel, SCR 2024
    Sep 2024 · Podium talk

    SCR2024 · UC Riverside

    “Preliminary Results and Progress on a Food Delivery Robot for the Homeless.” Sole author and presenter.

  • Ethan giving a talk to a seated audience at the Seoul Robot & AI Museum, next to the Food Angel exhibit
    Aug 2024 · Opening talk

    Robotics for Humanity · Seoul Robot & AI Museum

    Opened the workshop with a talk introducing Project Food Angel, on the day its exhibit opened.

  • Ethan presenting a slide titled Project Food Angel to the RoMeLa lab
    Jun 2024 · Research seminar

    RoMeLa Weekly Robotics Seminar · UCLA

    Presented my research to the lab.

  • Ethan, as an 8th grader, pointing at his research poster while explaining it to a visitor
    Sep 2022 · Poster presentation

    SCR2022 · UCLA

    My first research poster, on data collection for robot soccer vision. People’s Choice Poster Award.

Publications

  • 2026

    A Co-Designed Legged Robotics Workshop for High School Students Using the Q8Bot Miniature Quadruped

    Conference paper23rd International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR2026), Ritsumeikan University, Osaka, Japan, July 2026 Co-author & presenter.
  • 2025

    Food Angel 2.0: From Wheels to Legs — An Empathy-Driven Hexapod for Food Delivery on Rough Urban Terrain

    Poster publicationSouthern California AI and Robotics Symposium (SCAIR2025), Cal Poly Pomona, October 2025 First author & presenter.
  • 2025

    Evaluating Data Collection Methods for Vision-Based Learning in Humanoid Robot Soccer

    Conference paper22nd International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR2025), College Station, Texas, June–July 2025 First author & presenter.
  • 2025

    RoboCup 2024 Adult-Sized Humanoid Champions Guide for Hardware, Vision, and Strategy

    Book chapterRoboCup 2024: Robot World Cup XXVII, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 15570, Springer, 2025 Co-author.
  • 2024

    Project Food Angel: Development and Preliminary Observations of a Food Delivery Robot for the Homeless

    Video publication40th Anniversary of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA@40), Rotterdam, Netherlands, September 2024 Sole author & presenter. IEEE RAS ICRA@40 Travel Award.
  • 2024

    Preliminary Results and Progress on a Food Delivery Robot for the Homeless

    Extended abstractSouthern California Robotics Symposium (SCR2024), UC Riverside, September 2024 Sole author & presenter.
  • 2022

    Evaluation and Comparison of Data Collection Methods for Machine Learning Vision Model in Autonomous Soccer Playing Robot

    Poster publicationSouthern California Robotics Symposium (SCR2022), UCLA, September 2022 First author & presenter. People’s Choice Poster Award.

Books & Chapters

  • Forth­coming

    Humans Through the Eyes of Robots (인간 관찰 보고서; English title tentative)

    Invited book chapterSeoul Robot & AI Museum (RAIM), 2026

    I contributed a chapter written from the perspective of Food Angel. In the book, the museum’s robots become the observers: instead of asking how humans see robots, it turns the question around and asks what robots might notice about us.

    Cover of the Korean book 인간 관찰 보고서, showing a woman in a museum gallery tagged by an emotion-recognition box
  • 2019

    Robot Eleven (로봇 일레븐)

    BookCo-authored with Dennis Hong; Influential, South Korea; ISBN 979-11-899-9504-1

    I actually started writing about robots long before I started publishing research about them. Robot Eleven is a graphic novel about eleven robots I created that begin as failures but eventually return to save the world’s toys. It became a bestseller in Korea.

    Cover of Robot Eleven, an illustrated book showing a boy surrounded by eleven cartoon robots

More from the podium

Ethan presenting photos of high school students building robots in the Q8Bot workshop at UR2026
Showing the Q8Bot workshop at UR2026, Osaka.
Ethan presenting a slow-motion video of a Q8Bot running on a grid mat
Explaining Q8Bot test runs at UR2026.
Ethan pointing to a video of Food Angel driving through a park during his talk in Seoul
Showing Food Angel in action at the Seoul Robot & AI Museum.
Ethan smiling and holding up his conference badge in front of the ICRA banner
My first ICRA, Rotterdam 2024.
A younger Ethan speaking at a podium at UCLA's Luskin Conference Center
Speaking at UCLA’s Luskin Conference Center.
In the media

On TV and in the news

View my full résumé