Derek Mccoll Email & Phone Number

Boston, Massachusetts, Us

Boston, Massachusetts, Us

Boston, Massachusetts, Us

I lead a small team developing and researching perception systems for a social robot project at Futurewei, in support of a commercial social robot planned for release in 2020. I design, develop, integrate and supervise various perception systems for the robot. These systems are built mainly on x86-64 Ubuntu in Python, C++, and Java. As perception lead, I designed the overall perception architecture by defining sensing requirements and goals, identifying individual perception modules, and the systems for fusing data from different modules. I also designed and developed individual perception modules, e.g. gesture recognition, user tracking, data fusion. Some modules were integrated based on open-source or commercially available technologies. I evaluate which perception modules need to be developed in house, based on unique project requirements and available resources and project timeline. I supervise the development of other perception systems, e.g., object detection, audio perception technologies. I also collaborate with robot and interaction designers, improving robot capabilities to meet their requirements. Additionally, I act as the affective computing reviewer of an academic collaboration with MIT Media lab.

Ottawa, Ontario, Ca

Research and development of intelligent adaptive systems, human-machine systems, and operator monitoring systems.

Ottawa, Ontario, Ca

Research and development of intelligent adaptive systems, human-machine systems, and operator monitoring systems.

I assist with preparing research proposals that are submitted to government agencies in order to obtain research funds to pay for future research. I also co-supervised students and assist with various research activities in the lab.

I have created novel automated affect estimation techniques that will allow a socially assistive robot to automatically recognize and determine the affective states of a person in order to adapt the robot’s own assistive behaviours when interacting with a person for a number of different tasks. The unique estimation techniques include robust image processing and learning methods. The robot consists of a multi-degree of freedom platform and is capable of displaying speech, body gestures and facial expressions. I have utilized Matlab and C++ to develop unique body pose estimation algorithms utilizing sensor fusion with data from depth and 2D colour or infrared imagers. Human behaviour and psychology research was utilized to develop the systems that interpret human body language displays as affect states as well as develop robot behaviours for engaging interactions. I also conducted a variety first of their kind human-robot interaction studies to determine how people interact and perceive socially assistive robots for a number of different assistive tasks including activities of daily living for the elderly. I also co-supervised a 17 undergraduate students in related projects.

Developed student laboratories based on robotic hardware and pawn programming language, gave laboratory lectures, assisted students during laboratories, met with students upon request, graded written and laboratory work. Course instructed by Prof. Goldie Nejat

Graded all written work, marked student presentations on robotic sensing, control and intelligence. Course instructed by Prof. Goldie Nejat

I researched the effect uncertainty of wire connection points has on the workspace of planar wire-actuated parallel manipulators. Computer simulations I created with Matlab were utilized to estimate the workspaces of two different manipulators with and without uncertainty utilizing two workspace estimation approaches developed in my previous work.

I developed novel computer simulation techniques in Matlab for estimating the workspaces of planar and spatial wire-actuated parallel manipulators. These algorithms included discrete and continuous techniques based on the analysis of the manipulator’s Jacobian matrix and previous research on grasping manipulators.

Assisted students during laboratories, met with students upon request, graded written and laboratory work. Course instructed by Prof. Brian Surgenor.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Mechatronics, Robotics, And Automation Engineering

Master Of Applied Science (M.A.Sc.), Mechatronics, Robotics, And Automation Engineering

Bachelor Of Science (B.Sc.) Engineering (Eng.), Mathematics And Engineering Mechanical Option