Research

Animals are extremely agile. However, we are still far from understanding exactly how they can maneuver so rapidly. This is crucial for understanding predator/prey interactions, in terms of the success (or failure) of hunts, the associated energetic costs and injury risks to animals. This understanding will enable a comprehensive view of locomotion, which has natural implications for biomechanics, ecology, evolutionary biology, and will be equally important to fast legged robots if they are to move at high-speed outside the safety of the laboratory.

In our lab, we utilise techniques from robotics ranging from trajectory optimisation, computer vision, sensor fusion to physical robots. This provides new insight to biology but also novel developments in robotics.

The Spatial Intelligence Lab (SIL) within the ARU is interested in the fundamental techno-social questions that impede the adoption of robotics in the African context. We do this by studying robots and how they interact with the space around them. With a view to further enhance human-robot interactions and coordination, deploy robots for longer periods in places they are required and create safer and more useful context-aware autonomous systems.