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What does a roboticist do? An interview with Prof. Tamin Asfour
As a child
I was always building
my own toys from wire,
small cars
that have wheels
that I connected with wire
and I always thought
that it should be possible
to make it so
that it moves on its own,
and knows on its own
which path to take.
Then I came to Germany
and studied electrical engineering
and after I was finished
I was looking for a subject for my Ph.D.
and chose robotics.
What faszinates you about humanoid robots?
My dream or goal is
to actually build systems
that are closer to human
in their versatility, ruggedness, their ability
to learn continuously
and to adapt to a variety of environments.
With this research
I hope to gain a greater
understanding of humans.
I mean, how does a human function in his motor function,
how does information processing work,
why are humans so versatile,
can complete many tasks at once and many of those at the same time
and why are humans so high-performance?
As of yet we are unable
to build systems
of the size of humans
that have the same performance,
meaning in strength, speed, precision,
but also meaning the ability
to adapt and predict.
Where do you get the inspiration for your work?
I have at least two sources
of inspiration for my work.
On the one hand it is biology,
in that we see
how humans are built,
how humans function
and then try to build systems
that emulate the versatility
and performance of humans.
The second source
are actually the science-fiction movies,
I mean, for what do we need such systems,
or what can such a system look like,
what tasks can a system perform.
I believe
that science-fiction or
that the directors or the novelists
put a lot of thought
into delivering solutions to problems.
But it will
take a long time
till we will build systems
that work in the real world
and not just in the movies.
How does one become a roboticist?
I came to Germany
to study electronic engineering.
First I learned German
and then I went to the Preparatory Courses.
Then I finished studying electronic engineering
with a focus on
regulation and control systems.
Of course this field inspired me
and I looked for a subject
where the knowledge I had
acquired in my studies:
mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, regulation systems,
where this knowledge
is tested in an integrated form,
where it is applied and research is performed with it.
Here robotics was
a great example for the multidisciplinarity
not only of mechanical and electrical engineering,
regulation engineering, but
where computer science also plays an important role.
But where we also understand
more about humans,
I mean working together with
sports scientists for instance,
to understand movement processes of humans
and to try to transfer these processes to robots,
in special cases
to humanoid robots
in order to attain human-like behaviour.
What does the every-day life of a roboticist look like?
The daily life of a roboticist is very exciting
because of the variety of tasks one has to perform
when one works with the developement and
programming of robots.
This of course includes the specification of robots,
if we wanted to build new robots for instance,
that means: How do the joints have
to be specified,
what kind of actuation, which computational
units are involved,
how should it all be integrated
into a complete system.
There are many components
that need testing, from the actuating elements,
to the sensors, to image processing, to language processing,
so we never get bored.
Are you looking forward to the first robot for your home?
I can really barely wait.
I would just love
to take the robot home,
better today than tomorrow,
but the systems are
not yet in a condition
to be really
used at home.
We still have to work
on making the systems more versatile,
higher performing
and on enabling the systems
to learn from humans around the clock.