Robotics Guest Lecture by Dr. Navinda Kottege

Robotics is one of the key trending fields of engineering with a massive impact on every other aspect of engineering. 
Taking this timely topic in to consideration a guest lecture on robotics was organized by EESoc with the coordination of IEEE RAS on 09^th of May 2017. The lecture was conducted by Dr Navinda Kottege on the topic Weaver: Hexapod robot with 5DoF limbs for navigating on unstructured terrain. Dr Navinda Kottege  is a Senior Research Scientist and Project Leader in Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Pullenvale, QLD.
Conducting the lecture Dr Navinda discussed about hybrid control architecture for a Weaver, making it capable of autonomously navigating in uneven terrain. The main contribution stems from the use of vision-based exteroceptive terrain perception to adapt the robot’s locomotion parameters. He also pointed out key advantages such as ability to run autonomously on a test bed with variable terrain types illustrate that adaptive stride and impedance behaviour decreases the cost of transport by 30% compared to a non-adaptive approach and simultaneously increases body stability (up to 88% on even terrain and by 54% on uneven terrain).
At the end of the session, appreciating his contribution and commitment a token of appreciation was offered on behalf of the students and EESoc.