Profile
Aran is a PhD student in the Department of Informatics at King's College London, under the supervision of Dr. Matthew Howard.
In 2012 he received a First Class Honours Bachelors in Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering from Trinity College Dublin, followed by a few years in the test, measurement, and automation industry.
Research Project
GROWBOT: A Grower-Reprogrammable Robot for Ornamental Plant Production Tasks
"This project will explore the use of new, human-robot interactive, soft robotic systems and their application for semi-automated propagation of multiple varieties of ornamental plants. It will investigate ways in which non-expert users (i.e., those without technical expertise in robot programming and control), but that are nevertheless skilled in plant processing, can use robots in their work, to relieve them of the more repetitive, labour-intensive tasks encountered."
This research is supported by the AHDB, and is being conducted with advisory support from industry representatives Kernock Park Plants,J&A Growers, and Winchester Growers.
Research Interests
- Imitation Learning
- Manipulation of Deformable Objects
- Variable Stiffness Actuation
Funding Awards
- AHDB PhD Scholarship (HNS/PO 194)
Publications
- Teaching Human Learners to teach Robot Learners
- Improving Task-Parameterised Movement Learning Generalisation with Frame-Weighted Trajectory Generation
Contact
Department of Informatics
Strand Campus
King's College London, Strand,
London, WC2R 2LS
United Kingdom
Email: aran[dot]sena@kcl.ac.uk
Personal Website: www.aransena.com