Rob has 35 years of engineering experience gained in the aerospace, microelectronic and consumer product industries at 3 iconic companies; BAE Systems, STMicroelectronics and Dyson respectively.
Early career work pioneered decentralised navigation architectures applied to robotic systems. Latterly, at Dyson, he provided leadership for teams innovating robotic early conceptual research. As Product Technical Lead, he managed the application of those innovations to the 360Heurist. For the 360VisNav he was the System Technical Lead and a member of the Project Programme Team. These advanced autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners achieved World-wide sales.
His public contributions include chairing advisory boards for EPSRC projects on ground-breaking research. These projects have resulted in successful exploitative and highly innovative companies, including SLAMCore and Opteran Technologies. For the IET he is a committee member of the Academic Accreditation scheme. He is also an active member of the Innovation Advisory Committee for Wales. For the UK government, he has collated and supported ‘calls for information’ for Parliament and House of Lords committees.
In 2017, Rob was awarded a RAEng Visiting Professorship at Imperial College London. He developed this role to engage with 21 national and 11 international universities and supported teaching of over 75 different cohorts and 2881 students. For the RAEng, Rob has served for over 3 years on the Visiting Professors Management Group. Here he has assisted in selecting over 100 RAEng Visiting Professors.
At the University of Birmingham, Rob has an established relationship with the School of Engineering, including:
- ERDF: Providing a letter of support for a Cobots proposal with international partners.
- RAEng: Inviting a senior academic to deliver a keynote at a Visiting Professors event.
- Queen’s Batton Relay for the Commonwealth Games: Attended a round table event between Malaysia/University of Birmingham.
- EPSRC: Expert letter of support for a multi-UK University project.
- Group Projects: Arranging a senior industrial roboticist to support a Birmingham University student group project.
- International Lectures: Providing 6 Guest Lectures for Universities with association to Birmingham in Syria, Vietnam and China
- Birmingham Guest Lectures: Providing face-to-face Guest Lectures and demonstrations to MSc students.
Rob is particularly interested in industry-academia interactions, and how university research and advanced technologies (including AI) can help grow and sustain economies and improve wealth and wellbeing of people around the World!