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Welcome to my website! Thanks for visiting, and please come back as I keep updating the contents frequently. This website reflects my journey so far in this planet, my research life and overall vision.
It also directs you to different aspects of my scientific work, multidisciplinary projects I am involved in, articles, talks, reviews of recent readings and travels.
At different places you will find audiovisuals, demos on research works, downloadable articles, presentation and software!
Hope you find the stuff interesting and do send me any comments and suggestions!
Recent News
Short Agri-Tech video in collaboration with Essex County Council and Tiptree covering our Strawberry picking robot in Tiptree's Vertical growing system engineered towards Smart, Sustainable Robotic Farming YouTube link
Delighted to receive 2023 Excellence in Education Award of University of Essex for the development of platform for showcasing final year UG Studnets' innovations through direct engagement with employers/industry. Picture from Awards ceremony!
Eastern Arc Conference 'Food in a time of crisis' September 20th 2023- delighted to host a special session on ManufacTuring Food with Robotics and AI bringing together range of stakeholders 'researchers, growers, funding bodies, tech start ups'. We will also have a invited talk from Paul Laniran (Innovate UK). You can find details of sessions/recordings in the Conference Resources page
As Module supervisor of CE301, delighted to release the 2023 Abstracts Booklet and accompanying e-poster videos of around 300 final year capstone projects done by CSEE UG sudents during 2022-23!
I will be speaking at Bett UK 2023 (29th March) on Collaborative Robots for Smart Farming at the Launch of the new DOBOT ED6 Collaborative robot arm, more information here!
New article on Robotic Strawberry Picking is now accepted and published open access in Springer Nature Journal Precision Agriculture (March 2023) Read online version!
Collaborative Robotics Research Scientist - I have a 30 Month position for a research officer to work on an Innovate UK funded project focusing on Cobotics for Low volume Manufacturing in collaboration with Skyships Automotive, Job Pack Here. Deadline to apply is 26th February 2023. Any Queries - Please do get in touch with me!
Many Congratulations to Rodolfo- for being awarded the 2022 KTP Associate of the year for the development of novel 3D printable Universal Gripper that delivers approximately 100 fold reduction in cost and can pick every food ingredient Read More!
Delighted that SCARLETT project has been funded by Innovate UK's highly competitive Farming Innovation Pathways program! SCARLETT stands for SCAlable and resource efficient indoor Robotic harvesting of LETTuce! The project was infact named after...(any guesses??)
British Science Week 2022 Watch out for the STEM in Action day featuring our research in Cobotics (above, below and around us). The theme is structured around Understanding Intelligence by Building Intelligent Machines/Robots- working in Farms, Hospitals, Extreme Environments.
KTP with Blackman and White on Adaptive motion control for Cutting machines has been rated as “outstanding” by Innovate UK’s national KTP grading panel and has generated a revenue of £1m so far! Read More
A snapshot of ongoing research projects
Agricultural Robotics- Harvesting Fruits of Robotic Labor!
Cobotics for Food Production Lines..
We are working on several projects in this critical area and targeting a range of crops (Soft Fruit, Wheat, Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, Mushroom, Lettuce) environments (Greenhouses, Vertical growing systems, Deepwater Pools) in collaboration with several growers Wilkin and Son's Tiptree Essex, JEPCO, NPL. The research is funded by Innovate UK (ISCF fortransforming food production UK-China) project Versatile (2021-24), EU H2020 SoftGrip (2021-23), several Industry funded projects on Crop Perception, Dexterous robotic manipulation/tool use for range of harvesting actions, Scouting with Drones and Mobile robots, Yield prediction.
The research looks at introducing robots in food production lines several of them hit by the pandemic and facing critical shortage of human labor to perform 'repetitive, laborious' tasks in extremely harsh (and freezing!) conditions. We are working on a) Designing novel 3D printed actuators for handling a range of deformable food materials, fruits, salads, vegetables, bread/paninis; b) Ingredient detection/localization c) Robotic Food Assembly d) Human-Robot and multirobot coordination production lines. Innovate UK funded SMART project looks at Robot Made Artisan Sandwiches in collaboration with Raynor Foods, KUKA and IRS.
Robotic Companions for Carehomes and Hospitals
Swift Cause-Effect learning and Common sense reasoning in Cognitive robots
Robot Episodic Memory - Connecting the dots of Experience....
In collaboration with Provide CIC and local hospitals at Essex, our research on robotic companions for care homes focusses on a) Swift learning of multimodal cognitive maps for new environments b) Human aware and goal directed navigation with a range of applications for commercial products c) Episodic memory for Proactive and user centric assistance d) Action perception and Intention detection e) Smart Robots for Smart Homes powered by IoT. More info
Reenacting playful experiments related to 'learning, reasoning, creativity' shown by animals on developmental robots, we are exploring cognitive architectures that will enable robots to 'act, interact, learn and reason' effectively in a complex world of objects, actions, causal relations, choices and People! More info
My work on bioinspired Robot episodic memory enables Cumulatively learning robots to effectively connect the dots between the remembered 'past' , the 'present context and the potential 'future' and hence plan goal oriented behaviors. Such memories are also partially transferable to other robots (as the video shows). More info here
Teaching Robotics @ University of Essex
CE101 YouTube Channel
Watch Now
The YouTube channel of my Module shows Amazing Robotics projects that First year students do at Essex..(another 40 projects videos to be added soon!!) Click to choose videos to play..
Challenge Week- Redefining first 5 days at the University!
Essex Challenge Week coordinated by me for last three years (2017-) won the 2018 Excellence in Education award of University of Essex! The vision is to give an 'Impossible is Nothing' experience to First years- During their first five days!! My presentation on what Challenge Week is about can be found here
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