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Dr Simukai Utete
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Dr Simukai Utete, an Oxford University graduate, has been appointed
the group leader for Mobile Intelligent Autonomous Systems (MIAS), an emerging research area within CSIR Modelling and Digital Science. She has been acting in the same position for the past seven months.
MIAS focuses on the development of science, engineering and technology capabilities in the area of field robotics that promote intelligent behaviour generation. To be more specific, the group carries out research on intelligent field robotics.
Academic achievements
Dr Utete formerly worked as a research assistant in the Signal
Processing and Neural Networks research group at Oxford University's
Engineering Science department. Together with colleagues at Oxford,
Rolls-Royce plc and Oxford BioSignals Ltd, she worked on systems for
monitoring aircraft engines. The project team's research included work
on prototype monitoring systems for Rolls-Royce development engines for
the latest commercial aircraft such as the Airbus A380.
She is a co-inventor, with Oxford and Rolls-Royce colleagues, of a patent on monitoring the health of power plants.
Prior to this, Dr Utete held the Lady Wolfson Junior Research Fellowship in Engineering Science at St Hugh's College, Oxford (1995-98).
During her tenure, she worked in the Robotics research group at Oxford on problems in mobile robotics, including on a NATO Collaborative Research Grant with a colleague in Turkey.
She holds a DPhil in Engineering Science (Robotics) from the University of Oxford (1995), as well as an MSc in Computation from the Computing Laboratory, Faculty of Mathematics at Oxford (1992).
Dr Utete is an electrical engineer and holds a BSc Honours degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Zimbabwe (1990). She studied at Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. While at Oxford, she was awarded a Balliol College Jowett Exhibition and a Wingate Scholarship (both 1994-95).
Dr Utete sits on the Industrial Advisory Board of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at the University of Johannesburg and is a member of the Rhodes Scholarship selection panel for Bishops Diocesan College. She is a past joint winner of the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Award given by The Spectator, London.
Her manager and director at the CSIR, Dr Motodi Maserumule, says he is sure that her appointment will provide the CSIR with new opportunities for collaboration with important engineering institutions in South Africa and abroad.
Leading MIAS
Commenting on her appointment, she says she is delighted to be leading the MIAS group and that the group is planning a number of exciting research projects.
The MIAS group's research focuses on four main areas: perception, navigation, planning and machine learning.
Perception involves the acquisition and processing of sensor data, which enable a robot to make sense of its surroundings. Much of the group's work in this area focuses on computer vision.
Navigation includes tasks such as localisation of a robot and mapping of its environment. Planning involves decision-making processes for an autonomous system and tasks such as determining a path from a start to a destination point.
Machine learning is used to determine techniques by which a robot can use past experience to guide future actions. The research group leaders within MIAS are Fred Senekal (perception and planning) and Liam Candy (navigation and learning).
Projects within MIAS include work on imitation learning where a robot arm learns to perform a task that has been demonstrated to it.
Other projects being developed within the group include an outdoor
autonomous rover and a proposed joint project with the CSIR Centre for
Mining Innovation and the Mechatronics and Micro Manufacturing group in
CSIR Materials Science and Manufacturing on development of a mine-safety
platform.
The aim of MIAS' research is to develop innovative field robotics systems to address challenges in real-world environments.
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