Robotics

More than a collection of projects, robotics is my real passion. Since the days of Lego and Meccano, I was always building planes, engines, robots and since then never gave up on them! It's a great privilege to have a job where I can carry on, having fun and building things.

Range of applications

I am interested in four types of robots: Modular, soft, application specific and androids.

Modular robots are those with a design that is made of repetitive modules. Such robots consist of an assembly of such modules. The assembly can be predefined (e.g. Benny) or can the robot can be self assembling (e.g. SeLF, PetRo) to optimisation depending on the theatre of operation and/or the mission.

Soft robots are, in my case, toys designed to trigger empathy and emotions in the user. I have been running the Mollycoddle project over many years to that effect with interesting outcomes.

Application specific robots are those designed with high specialisation to perform a narrow scope of functions. A good example is the QuadBot platform we developed few years ago.

Androids are where so many challenges lie unresolved and taunting. The MiniMe project is a series of concepts to approach the task from various directions. It is a daunting endeavour and I am going at a slow pace on this one, just due to limited resources and manpower. We are now working on a second concept that is very promissing.