 |
Mathias Nkwenja
PhD Student
Tchatchoua.Nkwenjamathias@students.newport.ac.uk
University of Wales, City Campus, Usk Way, Newport, NP20 2BP, UK
|
My research
I am presently working towards my PhD in ‘Human nociceptive withdrawal reflexes onto humanoid robots’. The aim of this work is to model and implement human protective reflexes on humanoid robots. An experiment is well underway in capturing reflexes on the human hand with the deployment of a motion capture suit and a stimulation device.
Motivation
Human beings have the capability to voluntarily modify their reflexive responses in certain situations to attain specific goals; the question arises of applying this to machines. Imitating humans’ reflexes onto humanoid robots has always been an inspirational tool for us to understanding how the reflexive processes of humanoid robot works. The application domains for robotics have now been stretching more extensively from factory to human environment. This is due to the elderly dominated scenario of most industrialised countries which has resulted for the need of automatizing common daily tasks due to the high cost or lack of local human expertise. In order to assure a smooth interaction of robots and humans in our society, the issue of safety, communication and dependability must be resolved. Robots for physical assistance to humans in our society will definitely reduce the fatigue and stress on humans and will then boost human’s capabilities in terms of force, speed and precision, and improve in general the quality of life. In the human-robot interaction, humans can bring experience, global knowledge and understanding for the correct execution of tasks. In the human – robot team, only robot with dependable architectures could be accepted. This will liberates human minds from uninteresting, mundane and repetitive tasks such as diffusion of unexploded bombs and working in nuclear stations.
The human nociceptive withdrawal reflex can be looked upon as when a human body comes in contact with a hot object, and the pain is the most obvious stimuli that will commence the flexor reflex and probably set the whole reflex into action. This eventually occurs when a part of the body touches a hot object, the receptor of the body part will send information via the sensory neurons to the spinal cord and the spinal cord will interpret the message and send a reply via the motor neurons to the effectors, which will then ask the body part to response to the stimuli. This is now the withdrawal of the body part from the stimuli. My goal will be to implement human nociceptive reflex on humanoid robots.
Academic writing
I have two projects that I did as part of my academic journey. These academics piece of writting is actually what has given me the impetus to develop my career as a researcher. Bsc(Hons) thesis in Forensics Examination of Embedded device(GPS). PDF
The second accademic work is my post graduate professional teacher training qualification. In this piece of action research, a thorough investigation was carried out on Differentiation in Community Education. PDF
Research interest
- Safety of humanoid robot with regards to humans reflexive data.
- Conceptual understanding of receptive fields in humans.
- Development of generic codes from human nociceptive withdrawal reflexive data.