General Information
UPM stands for Universal Planar Manipulator. It is a device made up of a single horizontally-vibrating flat plate and is capable of moving objects on its surface independently of each other. In other words, one or more objects can be moved without disturbing the other objects! If you want to see the UPM in action, see the chess demo, the beer demo, or Dan Reznik's demo page.
The UPM was invented by UCB Professor John Canny and grad student Dan Reznik, who completed his Ph.D. in 2000 and now works for Siemens TTB. Be sure to take a look at Dan's UPM website, which covers all the work he did.
As for me, I am Neil Alldrin, an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley majoring in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS). I have been doing research involving the UPM since last summer.