Christopher Hollitt

Dr Christopher Hollitt

Lecturer,
School of Engineering and Computer Science

Research Interests

The goal of my research is the development of mobile robots that can interact autonomously with their environment. To function independently in the real world, a robot must be able to cope with an environment that is constantly changing, sometimes rapidly. The main focus of my work is therefore the development of artificial robot “minds”, capable of perceiving and modelling the world in real time and then responding appropriately.

A robot decides on its actions through knowledge of the world and of its internal state. Historically, this decision making has been rather algorithmic, an approach that is brittle in complex environments. As the role of a robot becomes more complicated, it becomes increasingly difficult for the robot's designer to foresee all scenarios that the robot will encounter. Devising an optimal program for the robot thus become prohibitively difficult. I am interested in alternative decision making paradigms that enable the robot to display adaptive or creative capabilities. A system with such capabilities requires less effort during design and results in a robot that interacts more naturally with its surroundings.

As part of my robotics work, and more generally, I maintain an active interest in several other fields, such as low-noise control engineering, signal processing and statistical data processing.

Publications

For a list of my recent publications, please see the Publications Database.