Dave Russell

Profile

I am a first year PhD student working in the Robot Manipulation Lab in the School of Computing working under the supervision of Dr Mehmet Dogar. I previously attended the University of Leeds and attained a first class honours in Mechatronics and Robotics.

I have been passionate about Robotics since my first year of University and their capability to improve the lives of everyone by automating repetitive, unfulfilling and dangerous jobs around the world. There are countless occupations that due to the repetitive, labour-intensive nature of the work can lead to various injuries. 

I am also interested in STEM outreach and helping to inspire the next generation of Engineers and help run a Robotics enrichment class at a local college.

Research interests

My research interests are in creating better methods for robots to operate in cluttered and complicated environments with the help of machine learning to emulate human intuition. Modern robotic manipulators are very dextrous and flexible enabling them to mechanically complete almost any task, however, they still lack the software sophistication when tackling complex problems such as working in cluttered environments. Working in complex environments is relatively easy for humans as we can intuitively make predictions about the environment and how our actions will affect it. I wish to research how human intuition can be incorporated into planning algorithms to speed up slow planning times.

Qualifications

• MEng (1st) Mechatronics and Robotics (Industrial), The University of Leeds