Cum Laude with Robot
Widyawardana Adiprawita, ST, MT, a staff member of the Electrical Engineering study program, STEI-ITB, successfully earned a Doctorate (Dr.) in Electrical Engineering and Informatics with cum laude graduation at the Doctoral Promotion Session on September 28, 2011 at the Postgraduate School of the Bandung Institute of Technology.
Widyawardana, or more often called Doni, defended his dissertation entitled "PROBABILISTIC COGNITIVE ROBOT WITH SIMULTANEOUS LOCALIZATION-MAPPING CAPABILITIES AND DECISION MAKING BASED ON GROWTH KNOWLEDGE METHOD" in front of the promoters Prof. Dr. Ir. Adang Suwandi Ahmad, Dr. Ir. Jaka Sembiring, Prof. Dr. Ir. Bambang Riyanto, and examiners Prof. Dr. Ir. Kuspriyanto, Dr. Kusprasapta Mutijarsa and Ir. Wahidin Wahab Ms.C., Ph.D. This promotion session was chaired by Prof. Dr. Ir. Bernhard Sitohang and also attended by Prof. Dr. Pudji Astuti MS.
In his dissertation, Widyawardana introduced the concept of a cognitive robot capable of autonomously navigating in previously unknown environments. This autonomous navigation capability is made possible by the cognitive robot developing knowledge in the form of probabilistic maps and probabilistic policy spaces. To develop this probabilistic knowledge, particle filters and framework Probabilistic Markov Decision Process with reinforcement learning. In this dissertation, we develop four new methods that enable probabilistic growth processes to be faster, more accurate, and require fewer computing resources. These four methods are the Algorithm Resampling AAST for particle filters, flexible particle concept, simplification of Bellman equations in reinforcement learning and utilization heuristic in reinforcement learning.
The proposed concept is validated with a mechatronic instrumentation platform in the form of autonomous mobile robot with a differential drive system. System mobile robot it is equipped with encoder motor, three ultrasonic sensors and a wireless camera as computer vision.
During his doctoral program, Widyawardana published 25 scientific papers, six in international journals, and 19 in international proceedings.
Widyawardana hopes that robotics research will thrive at ITB, particularly on robots with cognitive capabilities that can operate in previously unknown environments. In his dissertation research, Widyawardana interacted extensively with students from ITB's Robotics Unit, AVRG (Autonomous Vehicle Research Group), and the ITBSat team as mentors. The student teams they mentored have achieved several achievements at the national level, such as the KRCI and Komurindo competitions, and even international competitions such as Trinity College Firefighting Robot CompetitionWidyawardana believes that robotics systems can be a unique attraction for students to explore engineering aspects at STEI-ITB that may initially be considered less interesting and difficult, such as algorithms, programming, probabilistic concepts, electronics, computer architecture, instrumentation, control systems, mechatronics, power electronics, and many other aspects. Furthermore, many soft skill that students will get in designing robots because generally students do not build robots individually but in teams.