ECS Student Success in Robotics Research

20 Aug 2012 - 09:27:09 in Alumni
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Henry Williams is a 22-year old Victoria student pursuing his PhD and making some great headway in the field of robotics.

His current research involves allowing robots to navigate unfamiliar environments and then create an internal mapping system that can be relayed to other robots. This essentially means the robot learns the most efficient way to get from A to B.

He holds first-class honours in a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Computer Systems, and received a Summer Research Scholarship and a Victoria PhD scholarship to continue his research into robot mapping systems.

What does his research mean?

The implications of Henry's research are that it may enable robots to share mapping information with each other to help them explore unstructured environments, such as collapsed buildings and potentially assist in rescuing people more quickly in disaster situations. Henry’s love of robots and electronics started young. He was a fan of Transformers, electronics and the movie Short Circuit.

He says his studies at Victoria had been a lot of fun:

“The lecturers are really cool. Everyone’s willing to help. Cool projects always going on and a lot of people to hang out with.” He also enjoys his weekly research group, where students can bounce ideas off each other about their creations, even for home projects. Henry’s supervisor Will Browne said of Henry: “He is a first-class engineering student who is as happy building robots and implementing the latest AI techniques on them as he is playing StarCraft or hockey in a local team.”

Along with his team, Henry is building robots that will compete in the 2012 National Instruments Autonomous Robotics Competition. Teams will showcase their robots against teams from top universities across Australia and New Zealand. The focus for the competition is ‘obstacle avoidance, object handling and navigation.

A bright future is ahead for Henry.

While at Vic, Henry was paid to go with a group of other students to present his research at conference in Australia about evolutionary intelligence. He also worked on a joint programme with the Queensland University of Technology. “Collaborating with guys in the top of my field was really cool,” he said. He has already been seconded to a top university research group in Australia and will continue designing, building and generating intelligence for state-of-the-art robots.

Henry has some parting advice for students intending on studying electronics or robotics at University.

“If you are interested in robots, study Physics and Maths—it may be boring at times but they are really useful”, he said. “If you can pick up any Electronics, Computing or anything relating to that, just go for it.”

And does he think that we should be worried about robots taking over the world?

“With current techniques of programming, it won’t happen ... but then again, who knows where we will be in 10 years?”

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