Hello!
This is my old personal web site. It is largely out-of-date.
As an engineer and researcher, David has developed cutting-edge robot systems for applications in the manufacturing, automotive and health care industries.
He has developed general-purpose robots that could work alongside human workers in a manufacturing environment, to move materials and components between locations (pick-and-place), to fixture raw materials for CNC machining (machine-tending), to prepare parts for assembly (kitting), and even assembling parts together (assembly).
David has worked on robots for helping people with tasks in the home, where infirm or physically impaired people struggle to perform tasks using their hands. His design for an assistive robot won a grant from the American-Australian Association.
He developed software algorithms to enable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to perform inspection and mapping of industrial and agriculture environments. The “drone” was capable of finding its way both in wide-open areas and narrow spaces like doorways, while avoiding obstacles such as power lines.
As a Senior Engineer at Aptiv Delphi Automotive Systems, a spin-off from General Motors, David developed safety systems for cars, designed to reduce congestion and highway fatalities. He researched and developed software algorithms that allow self-driving vehicles to “see” the world using various sensors, including features such as signs, lane markings, pedestrians and other cars. These autonomous cars were successfully tested and rolled-out in Pennsylvania and Nevada.
Previously David was a Robotics Engineer at the National Robotic Engineering Center (NREC), where he developed systems for a robot to operate in emergency situations, such as helping to rescue people after a natural disaster or surveying a hazardous industrial area after a nuclear accident. He researched and developed algorithms for robot perception and object manipulation that enabled the robot to use its two “hands” to perform tasks like opening a door, locating a hydraulic valve, and turning a round wheel handle. The robot CHIMP (CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform) was successfully field-tested and the team won a $500,000 prize in the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
He has worked at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the Humanoid Robot Research Center “HUBO Lab” at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology), the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), the University of Queensland (UQ), Kinema Systems, Rainbow Robotics, and PAL Robotics.
noun the combination of mechanical engineering,
electronics, and computer software ….
David has a Master of Science (Robotics) from Carnegie Mellon University,
a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronics) magna cum laude from the the University of Queensland,
and a Diploma of Engineering Technology from Swinburne University of Technology.