I like to introduce myself as a creative achiever. Initially, describing what I like seemed like an easy task, but it turns out to be a tedious one. I am interested in a wide range of topics and can be easily persuaded to follow even more disciplines. To give you a head start here are a few branches of my interests: training, robotics, artificial intelligence, software development, real-time and rendered 3D graphics, art, scientific research, underwater collective robotics, internet, web development, philosophy, psychology, writing, games and technology. I put the last one in, just to cover everything else, so I will be on the safe side!

I have attempted to list a few of these branches below with a brief description of what I do or have achieved over the years. For my interest in training, please see the appropriate page.

Robotics

I have been involved in a variety of robotic projects operating in just about any environment. I mean this literally:

• Underwater. Oceans are fascinating and our knowledge of them is limited. Underwater Robotic projects are essential to enhance our understanding of the world. It still amazes me that every time a group of divers perform a deep dive, they discover new species. Here are a few projects I worked on:

• Flock Distortion. Researched and developed a novel method to calculate the position of underwater vehicles based on their inter-distances (See my PhD thesis).

• Multiple Unmanned Underwater Vehicles. I explored the state of the art in regard with potential use of a group of underwater vehicles intending to perform a mission. Examples of the missions were survey, search and destroy and mine clearance.

• Air. In collaboration with University of Wales in Aberystwyth, I worked on Aerobots to perform formation flying in air. Aerobots are easily disturbed by air current flows, temperature variations and inaccurate positioning systems used indoors. This makes formation flying even more challenging, but at the same time more exciting.

• Space. I have also been involved in space-based robotics.

• The upcoming European Space Agency’s ExoMars project intends to send a Robotic Scientist to Mars. My role is to look into the Software Architecture of this robot and attempt to make the rover as intelligent as we can get. The vital issue is to make sure that the robot is safe as these kinds of missions are safety critical.

• I have also worked on satellite tasking software and mission management.

• Land. I am involved in the design of autonomous rovers.

• A robot operating on Mars is extremely constrained. It has limited processing power (perhaps in the range of sub-Gigahertz), limited memory, limited power, intermittent and low-bandwidth communications. A robot on Mars should be treated as an extremely fragile item where no action should put the life of the robot in danger. In addition to all of these constraints, we intend to get the robot to act intelligently as a scientist and expect it to find life on another planet. Not an easy task by any standards. I am currently looking into task planning and autonomous resource validation of such robots.

• Another project that I am participating in is a LIDAR-based Intelligent Robotic Porter System. It intends to demonstrate navigation, route planning and task planning of a robot in a complex and dynamic environment such as an airport.

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3D Graphics

I have always been interested in computer graphics and have followed the progress of the industry closely over the years. In particular I am interested in visualisation of complex data. As technology progresses, there is more demand for production and consumption of data. Unfortunately humans are not very good at understanding raw data, while computers are pretty good at it. As a result, there is always a need to reduce the complexity of the underlying data or service by showing user-friendly images and user interfaces. As the digitisation of the society is getting faster, the need for effective visualisation is also getting stronger. If you look at the major technological advances, you will see that the vast majority have introduced a product or a service that has been easier to use than previous attempts.

Now you may ask what kind of 3D visualisations are available. Basically, they can be divided to two main categories:

• Ray-tracing. With this technique, the scene is rendered by emitting ray at every pixel of the scene. The production of the graphics may take as long as it takes. In this mode, the quality of the produced graphics is very high. Animations or single graphics could be used for PR purposes. 3D illustration can show complex problems visually, especially in presentations.

• Real-time. The graphics are produced on the fly in real-time. The main difference is that the user can interact with the environment and expect the visual elements to change instantly based on her inputs. It is useful for:


• Dynamic simulations based on computations. For example, a satellite's orbit can be calculated based on a number of initial parameters. The user can change the parameters and expect to see different orbital calculations.

• Interactive simulations/visualisations similar to games. Functional Engineering Simulators (FES) fit into this category. For example a user may interact with a vehicle through an input device and expect the vehicle to respond accordingly in the scene. 

Challenges
As always there are many challenges to overcome. The pace of technology is pushing the limits of possibilities. The following shows a number of major issues:

• There is a need for visualisation of domain-specific knowledge with focus on data. After all, it is the data that you care about and the visualisation tool should support the conversion process of data to a visual image.
  

• It is important to rapidly produce visual representations with minimal cost.
  

• The solution needs to be responsive to new technological advances. To resolve this, we need to adopt current established architectures.


• Standardisation is always an important issue. Necessary steps should be taken to make sure one is not locked to an specific supplier.

• It is necessary to have future-proof graphical user interfaces, so that you don't need to redesign them every six month.
  

• Satisfy user needs. Users are expecting more as they are getting used to a varity of technologies thrown at them. If someone invents a new visual system, the rest of the planet expect you (as well as everyone else) to deliver the same service. That may prove to be difficult to deliver in the short term, but if that's what the user wants, then that's what you have to deliver.
  

Art

For some reason, defining art has always proved to be a challenge. I like it whichever way is defined! I found that expressing myself through the design of computer graphics was very satisfying. A number of screenshots of animations or computer graphics that I have created are shown on right.