NC State Professor's Autonomous Systems Research Inspired by Transformers

Dr. Edgar Lobaton wrote:My passion for machine learning and autonomous systems started when I was a little kid.

I was in my first year of elementary student in Peru, waiting diligently every weekend in front of the TV in order to catch an episode of the Transformers animated series. Sitting on my parents’ couch, hearing the classic tune describing the robots as “more than meets the eye,” the same thought would keep going around and around in my head: “I’ve got to have one.”

Growing up in a third-world country, my parents could not afford to buy Transformers toys for me. As a resourceful kid, I did the next best thing: I decided to build my own. With the limited resources I had, I started to build my own robots. At age five, I started by drawing my first Transformers on a piece of paper, cutting them out with my bright red training scissors, and then folding legs and arms in order to convert them into little squares. Not the most useful Transformers, but it was a first attempt.

Seen here: Not quite what they're working on