Karime’s World of Robotics

Machine learning and controls researcher, Karime, Ph.D., has a unique housing arrangement – she lives with a robot. Specifically, she has a robotic arm in her Toronto apartment.

“Since joining in January 2021, I have been collaborating with a global team to bring a new robotic arm up to speed,” said Karime. “They sent me a robot, and I keep it in my living room.”

Karime is a well-travelled Robotics Engineer. She started her studies at the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Cuernavaca, Mexico, earned her master’s at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and completed her P.hD at the University of Toronto.

“I am originally from Mexico, and I did a bachelor’s in mechatronics engineering, which mixes mechanical engineering, electronic design, and a bit of computer science,” said Karime. “During my master’s, I fell in love with research and addressing hard problems.”

Life with robots

Karime is helping optimise new robotics for online grocery fulfilment and other applications. She wants to design an instrument that does what it’s told but can also adapt to unstructured environments.?

“I’m developing technologies on the edge of control theory and machine learning,” said Karime. “Control theory gives the robot stability, and the machine learning gives it the ability to learn as it interacts with its environment.”

Robots can be awkward like toddlers, making it challenging to teach them how to handle packages, which come in different sizes, weights, colours, and textures. And while robot design is always an iterative process, this is especially true for this project because the arm is 3D printed, giving hardware and software engineers tremendous flexibility to refine it.?

“The problems we’re facing are super challenging,” said Karime. “We have so much potential with this robot because we can redesign it and give it capabilities other robots don’t have. We have infinite possibilities, and that’s exciting for me.”

Inspiration from biology?

Living and working with a robot, Karime finds herself thinking deeply about how robots should function. She ponders the different ways humans move and how robots might replicate those motions. However, robots have unique sensing capabilities and actuation – people can’t rotate their arms 360 degrees, for example. Should solutions be based on human models or be uniquely robotic?

“For me, it’s both,” said Karime. “It’s trying to take inspiration from humans and biology, but I also like to ground it in the hardware. These are the sensors we’re working with and the computational capabilities we have, which are different from my hands and me.”

Still, Karime recognises that she’s asking the robot to perform reaching, grasping, and moving tasks previously reserved only for people. She likes to break down these different actions, sometimes using herself as a model organism.

“Ever since I started working with these algorithms, I started to be more conscious about the things I do,” she said. “If I’m unloading the dishwasher, sometimes I close my eyes and ask myself, ‘Is vision really important for this task?’”

She often reminds herself that humans have limitations robots can exceed. People only have five senses, and even those can be improved. Human sight only has one perspective, but robotic vision can have multiple views.?

“I go back and forth between what I can do and what is possible,” said Karime. “It’s trying to think outside the box: different sensors, more computation, different configurations, perhaps longer fingers. It’s fun to consider all these possibilities.”

Settling into a new environment?

Karime learned a lot more than robotic engineering from her Ph.D. advisor Angela Schoellig, an associate professor at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, including how to adapt to a male-dominated profession. She also shares her experiences with other women, encouraging them to pursue careers in engineering and stay in touch if they ever need support.?

“At times, it was hard to be the only woman in the conference room, lecture hall or classroom,” she said, “but I also found supportive friends and great environments. I like to share that type of mentoring with others.”

She feels lucky to be in a team which has provided a supportive environment for her to grow. She enjoys collaborating with her colleagues and working on the challenging problems they’ve been asked to solve.

“I have this amazing opportunity to do what I love,” said Karime. “And at the end of the day, I’m going to see my algorithms out in the world on these robots. That’s just going to be incredible.”

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In November 2020, Ocado Group, pioneers of the online grocery market, acquired Haddington Dynamics and Kindred. As a result of these acquisitions, Ocado Technology’s Advanced Technology Team became larger and even more multi-faceted. The team develop cutting-edge solutions in robotic handling and autonomous mobility.