Ashitava Ghosal is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a faculty member of the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He obtained BTech, MS and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, University of Florida at Gainesville and Stanford University, respectively. Prior to joining Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore he had research appointments at Carnegie Mellon University and at Integrated Systems, Inc., Santa Clara. He has authored the textbook Robotics: Fundamental Concepts and Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2006).