Christopher Hollitt

Dr Christopher Hollitt

Senior Lecturer
School of Engineering and Computer Science
address

Research Interests

My research aims to develop 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 and makes devising an optimal program for the robot 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.

The majority of my current research work is in machine perception, particularly machine vision. The work spans a wide area, from fundamental problems in feature recognition, through techniques for efficiently utilising the limited sensory resources of a robot system, to high level applications of robot vision.

Future research students

I am always looking for good research students to join our team. If you are interested in a Masters or PhD work in any of these areas (or similar) then please send me an email, including a CV and complete academic transcript. Possible future projects include the following.

• Active vision and object tracking,
• Combining object recognition with object tracking,
• Learning what is important - selective feature detection for robots,
• Vision based estimation of robot pose and ego-motion,
• Incorporation of robot emotion into active perception,
• Multi-modal active perception,

Current research students

PhD:

• Ahmed Sheikh Deeb - Robot saccade generation. (with Will Browne)
• Arindam Bhakta - Gaussian Process based robot vision strategies (with Will Browne and Marcus Frean)
• Syed Saud Naqvi - GPU based fast visual feature detection (with Will Browne)
• Asim Masood - Detection of the Cochlear Microphonic (with Paul Teal)

Masters:

• Anna Friedlander - Diffuse Source Detection for Radio Astronomy (with Marcus Frean and Melanie Johnston-Hollitt)

Final Year Projects:

• Rowan Barrie - A Robot Vestibulo-Ocular Reflex
• Thomas Hughes - Discrete Analogue Electronics
• Ian Leow - Compliant Robot Actuators

Previous research students

Masters:

• Abigail Arulandu - (2013) Use of Magneto-rheological Fluids in Stroke Rehabilitation (with Will Browne).

Final Year Projects:

2012

• Tim Sherry - Visual tracking and laser targeting
• Michael Lewis - Development of a Robot Head and Neck

2011

• Scott Mullan - Design of a Biomimetic Robot Arm.
• James Turner - A Robotic Nervous System.

2010

• Abigail Arulandu - Hand Rehabilitation using Compliant Actuation (with Will Browne).
• Matthew Bourne - Pulse Stream Arithmetic.
• Thomas Lambrecht - Active Robot Vision.
• Brendan Vercoelen - Design of a True 3D Digital Display (with Robin Dykstra).

Publications

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