#SoCaltech: Donny Lu
“Helping to run the Caltech Robotics Team has given me so much experience. One day, I was walking around campus with my friend, and we went down to the Guggenheim basement and saw a big logo that said, ‘Caltech Robotics Team.’ We didn’t even know a robotics team existed on campus. I had a chance to chat with the previous president, and she said they had trouble recruiting people after COVID. I became determined to bring it back. The next day, I went to the lab, and it was a mess. It hadn’t been touched in years, so I cleaned up everything and literally organized every single drawer. Then I began the effort of building the team again, and we started with battle bots. We got a lot of people interested, and now we’re doing different competitions in the area, especially through Southern California Attack Robotics. Trent Wilson [a lab machining assistant] from the Spalding machine shop really helped us build out that program.
“I also got the chance to attend the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, where I met other undergrads from Columbia, Rutgers, and UC Berkeley. We wanted to build some projects no one has built before, so we decided to build a robotic local motion platform using classical control algorithms that Aaron Ames [Bren Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering, Control and Dynamical Systems] has studied a lot. [Mechanical engineering professor] Joel Burdick, our team advisor, has also given us so many resources for all our different projects, and we have the ability to reach out to alums, who are literally the best in the industry, who have been helping us push through. I don’t really think you can get that anywhere else in the world.”
Donny Lu is a fourth-year undergraduate from Macau, China, graduating in June with a BS in physics and a minor in aerospace engineering. Originally a politics major, he switched to physics before transferring to Caltech in 2024 as part of a 3-2 program with Pomona College. Lu has served as president of the Caltech Robotics Team for the past year and helped to build a fully autonomous motorized couch, combat robots, and a humanoid robot, among other projects. After graduation, he plans to continue working for the start-up he founded, Dlab Sciences, which develops 3D-printed materials for manufacturing.
#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.