Betsy is starting her final year of a Bachelor of Information Technology/ Bachelor of Arts. She studies linguistics, history (classical and medieval), and whichever computing courses take her fancy. She enjoys interactions between different areas of knowledge, and is particularly interested in combining linguistics and computing to deal with issues of artificial systems and natural language usage and comprehension.

Hilton was studying as a fourth-year Engineering student, majoring in Mechatronics. His summer project at Thinking Systems involved porting a SLAM navigation algorithm to an omnidirectional drive platform, and helped instil his interest in biologically inspired robotics. His thesis continues in a similar vein, and explores the viability of using the GPU as a coprocessor in computationally demanding aspects of SLAM.

Nick entered his final year of a Bachelor of Engineering, majoring in Mechatronics. He is interested in biomimetic systems of all kinds, especially prosthetics. He is fascinated with human-machine integration and hopes cyborgs will one day be commonplace. During his time with Thinking Systems, he researched and prototyped a whisker sensor to be used on a robot rat.

Daniel Clarke commenced his fourth year of his degree, an extended major in Mechatronic Engineering. His main interests lie in embedded systems, the control of autonomous vehicles and biomimicry. Over the summer he worked on an outdoor robot platform used for navigational experiments.

Scott finished his fifth year of a dual Electrical Engineering/IT degree. He has an interest in software design in general, in particular game/simulation design and also web server development. He worked for Thinking Systems over summer, designing a web interface for their Pioneer robots so they would be publically accessible from the internet.

Andrew Jones graduated at the end of 2009 in Engineering (Mechatronic) / Arts (German and Mathematics) dual degree. His undergraduate thesis is on the Visualisation High Dimensional Data, in particular data that is derived from text. He is interested in Computational Linguistics and non-linear optimisation techniques among other Artificial Intelligence topics.

Steven completed a degree in Psychology at Adelaide University and with honours in 2009. Along the way, he managed to pick up a diploma in translation (Chinese) from TAFE SA, some experience as a research assistant for Dr Simon Dennis, and an interest in all things cognitive or language-y. He received a scholarship to study for his PhD in China in 2009.

Tim was in his third year of a Bachelor of Engineering (mechatronics). He is interested in the robust skill set of mechatronic engineering and its integration into society. Over the summer, Tim aided in the Thinking Systems research by automating and streamlining experiments conducted by research staff at the Queensland Brain Institute, using software engineering and computer vision techniques.

Joel was in his final year of his undergraduate degree of Mechatronic Engineering. He is currently employed by the Royal Australian Air Force, taking part of the Undergraduate Sponsorship Program. He hopes to apply skills learnt within his degree for his future career for both research and development. Over the summer, he developed an initial stage for an omni-direction machine vision system.

Kieran was in his final year in a Mechatronic Engineering degree. He is interested in control systems engineering and computational modelling. Over the summer he has worked for Thinking Systems at The Queensland Brain Institute. His focus was on using computational techniques to help understand the impact of sensor and motor noise in the path integration of mammals, in the hope a similar process could be implemented on their Pioneer robots.

Tim was in his second year of a double degree in Engineering and Science at the University of Queensland. His engineering majors are Mechanical and Aerospace, with a Physics major for the Science degree. These choices stem from his long-time interests in the fields of flight and aerodynamics, as well as his ongoing curiosity in how mechanical systems work.

Robert holds a Bachelor of Multimedia Design and was currently completing a Bachelor of Science. He is interested in merging the media skills he has learnt while studying multimedia design, with a general science background. Currently he is involved with micro-fabrication of hardware used in electrophysiology experiments.

Trang Nguyen wass in her final year of a Bachelor of Engineering, majoring in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering. Her interests include complex biological systems, biomedical signals and image processing, electronics and dynamic systems. This summer Trang conducted research on hippocampus modelling to extract interesting behaviours from a complex dynamic system using spiking neuronal network.

Jack Valmadre is working on his Engineering thesis on’ 3D Human Pose Estimation using Rigid Structure’ at UQ. His interest in robotics began when he competed in the RoboCup Junior competition at school. He recently completed an internship at Microsoft working in their internet search division, Live Search.

Ryan was in his fifth year of a dual degree in Engineering (Mechatronics) and Commerce (Finance) at the University of Queensland (UQ). He is currently pursuing an undergraduate thesis with Thinking Systems, developing a multichannel wireless neural recording and video tracking system suitable for rat navigation. His academic interests include digital systems, electrophysiology and wireless technologies.

Jessica was completing her fourth year of Mechatronic Engineering. During summer 09/10 she worked on developing a new motor driver system for the Omni-directional robot. Through this project she has learnt about different microcontrollers, motor controllers and integrated development environments. She is very interested in mathematical and dynamic modelling and hopes to develop robotic legs for the Robo-Rat for her undergraduate thesis.

Kieran was in his final year studying Mechatronics Engineering at UQ. He enjoys working with embedded systems, hardware design and low-level software, particularly in taking promising new technologies and adapting them for use in robotic applications. Over summer he researched and designed a battery powered supply and recharging system for a fully autonomous omni-directional robot as well as exploring options for a cross-platform recharging dock system for mobile robots.

Ezra was a fourth year undergraduate studying Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Queensland.

Ezra’s role at Thinking Systems during the summer break of 2009-2010 was to research and develop a robust sensor system for an omni-directional robot. This included not only proximity sensing but haptic and cliff detection as well.