Huu Duc Nguyen

Doctoral researcher
mail: huu.duc.nguyen@tu-berlin.de

Duc is a PhD student at SCIoI and a member of the Robotics and Biology Laboratory. He finished his bachelor’s in Hanoi, Vietnam, his master’s at RWTH Aachen University with the thesis and internship at Robert Bosch GmbH. At SCIoI, Duc is working on Project 49, “Parrobots II”. The name “parrobots” comes from parrots and robots. In 2011, scientists in behavioral biology conducted a series of experiments leading to interesting results about the learning abilities of cockatoos (one of 21 parrot species). These cockatoos managed to solve complex sequences of mechanical locks. Despite how exciting the results were, there are still many questions about how those intelligent behaviors came into play. On the other hand, it would be unfair to say that the state of the art in robotics could not achieve any of the cockatoos abilities. But a single unified robotic system, with the corresponding intelligence level is still in R&D. Collaborating with the mentioned team in Oxford, Vienna, Duc tries to bridge the connection between two fields, and understand how those robots and cockatoos learn to solve complex mechanical puzzles.