About Me

I’m currently a robotics research engineer at Robotics Research Centre of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU). Before that, I have been fortunate enough to serve as a Research Associate at the University of Hong Kong and participated in the DAPRA Robotics Challenge (DRC) until end of December 2015. My research interest is Artificial Intelligence, Whole Body Manipulation Control, Motion Planning, Robot Vision & Perception, Path Planning and Localization.

EDUCATION

University of Manchester (UK)

MSc in Advanced Control & System Engineering

University of Leeds (UK)

BEng in Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering

Work Experince

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU)

Robotics Research Engineer

January 2016 - Present

Design and build a fully autonomous mobile robot picker system used for e-commerce warehouse. The robot could autonomously move, identify, locate and pick-and-place targeted objects according to the purchases order. My research focuses on, inter alia, motion planning, grasping analysis and planning, path planning, robot perception (identification and provide estimation), base movement control, localization and whole system setup and integration with Robot Operating System (ROS)

The University of Hong Kong (HKU)

Research Associate

July 2013 - December 2015

Team member of HKU, participating in the DARPA Robotics Challenge.

My research focus in team is Whole Body Manipulation Control, Motion planning, Robot Vision and Perception, Robot’s hand Design, Motor Control on Robot Operating Systems (ROS).

I was very much involved in the manipulation and robot vison & perception areas, I worked on Robot Kinematics and Continuous Mathematics Calculation based on the D-H parameters to improve Atlas manipulation control. This basement program enabled Atlas to perform several manipulation tasks such as Valve Turning, Wall Cutting and Pick and Place. In those tasks, I programmed the Atlas to identify the objects (Valve, Wall, Drill) and then to pick it up or move/cut it as per requirements imposed by the authorities. All perceptions and motion planning are auto-generated by the pre-formatted program.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Aritificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is arguably the most exciting field in robotics. It's certainly the most controversial: Everybody agrees that a robot can work in an assembly line, but there's no consensus on whether a robot can ever be intelligent.

Like the term "robot" itself, artificial intelligence is hard to define. Ultimate AI would be a recreation of the human thought process -- a man-made machine with our intellectual abilities. This would include the ability to learn just about anything, the ability to reason, the ability to use language and the ability to formulate original ideas.

Roboticists are nowhere near achieving this level of artificial intelligence, but they have made a lot of progress with more limited AI. Today's AI machines can replicate some specific elements of intellectual ability.

Humanoid Robot

A humanoid robot is a robot with its overall appearance based on that of the human body.

In general humanoid robots have a torso with a head, two arms and two legs, although some forms of humanoid robots may model only part of the body, for example, from the waist up. Some humanoid robots may also have a 'face', with 'eyes' and 'mouth'.

Whole Body Motion Planning

Humanoid service robots performing complex object manipulation tasks need to plan whole-body motions that satisfy a variety of constraints: The robot must keep its balance, self-collisions and collisions with obstacles in the environment must be avoided and, if applicable, the trajectory of the end-effector must follow the constrained motion of
a manipulated object in Cartesian space. These constraints and the high number of degrees of freedom make wholebody motion planning for humanoids a challenging problem.

Robot Vision & Perception

Robot Vision & Perception given robot capability of see and interactive with the robot. It's an importance criteria for smart robot.

Robot Localization

Localization involves one question: Where is the robot now? Or, robo-centrically, where am I, keeping in mind that "here" is relative to some landmark (usually the point of origin or the destination) and that you are never lost if you don't care where you are.

Although a simple question, answering it isn't easy, as the answer is different depending on the characteristics of your robot. Localization techniques that work fine for one robot in one environment may not work well or at all in another environment.

For example, localizations which work well in an outdoors environment may be useless indoors. All localization techniques generally provide two basic pieces of information:

what is the current location of the robot in some environment?
what is the robot's current orientation in that same environment?

The first could be in the form of Cartesian or Polar coordinates or geographic latitude and longitude. The latter could be a combination of roll, pitch and yaw or a compass heading.

AWARDS & HONOURS

~~DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC)~~

~~Finalist~~

The DRC is a competition of robot systems and software teams vying to develop robots capable of assisting humans in responding to natural and man-made disasters. It was designed to be extremely difficult. Participating teams, representing some of the most advanced robotics research and development organizations in the world, are collaborating and innovating on a very short timeline to develop the hardware, software, sensors, and human-machine control interfaces that will enable their robots to complete a series of challenge tasks selected by DARPA for their relevance to disaster response. Three sequential DRC events place equal emphasis on hardware and software.

The DRC finals occurred June 5-6, 2015 at Fairplex in Pomona, California. The event will require robots to attempt a circuit of consecutive physical tasks, with degraded communications between the robots and their operators.

~~DAPRA Robotics Challenge Trials 2013~~

~~Awarded twelfth in the competition~~

The DRC Trials occurred December 20-21, 2013 at the Homestead-Miami Speedway, where teams guided their robots through eight individual, physical tasks that tested mobility, manipulation, dexterity, perception, and operator control mechanisms

~~WorldSkills UK 2012 Mobile Robotics Competition National Final~~

~~Gold Medalist~~

The competition consists of programming a FESTO Robotino and construction of a robot to undertake a wide range of challenging tasks. The subject matter of competition was given to the competitors on the competition day itself and the competitors were required to finish the tasks within a limited time. The main purpose of the competition was to test competitor’s logic, design and fault finding skills in a constraint environment.

~~IEEEXtreme 6.0, 24-Hour Programming Competition~~

~~Awarded second place among University of Manchester overall Eighteenth in United Kingdom~~

IEEEXtreme was a global challenge in which student was to compete in a 24-hour time span with each other to solve a set of programming problems. Problems arise every hour

~~WorldSkills UK 2011 Mechatronics Competition National Final~~

~~National Finalist~~

It is a team competition consists of designing, building and testing pneumatic, electro-pneumatic circuits and PLC programmes for sequential and non-sequential tasks. It is a practical competition that will test the competitor’s logic, design and fault finding skills in a challenging environment.

~~WorldSkills UK 2010 Mechatronics Competition National Final~~

~~National Finalist~~

~~The Best Project Design~~

~~Runner Up~~

It is a reward for the Best Project Design in Diploma in Engineering Project Poster Presentation

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CERTIFICATION

LabVIEW Associate Developer (CLAD)

National Instruments

October 2012 - October 2014