As a senior currently attending the University of Florida in Gainesville Florida, Jonathan came to the University of Central Florida Research for Undergraduates program with a background of study in Mechanical Engineering.

Having a basis established in a different engineering discipline didn’t deter Jonathan’s work within the Electrical and Computer Engineering sponsored program. Instead, Lisek was able to pick up a practical, working knowledge of research and experimentation methods that would aid him not only in his Mechanical Engineering work at UF, but also in any future academic and professional pursuits. With the intention of applying to graduate school as well as for a National Science Foundation Fellowship, Jonathan’s main goal before undertaking his REU project entitled ‘ Interfacing Global and Local Motion Planners for Autonomous Robots,’ was to become more acquainted with who one goes about conducting research.

Lisek’s project for the REU program sought to incorporate the productive methods of research advocated by the Faculty program participants, and also provide some type of “real world” application. Lisek explained his project and it’s implications to the Engineering field: “Global motion planners seek out the most feasible path for a robot to navigate between a starting and finishing point. However, a severe disadvantage of such planners is that they do not consider any equations of motion or constraints for a robot that will traverse the path. As a result, the path returned by a global search method may not be passable by a physical robot. Conversely, local motion planners explicitly consider the physics of a robot. By incorporating the ideas from local motion planners into global motion planners, it will be guaranteed that a path returned by a global search method will be traversable by a physical robot.” Those who would benefit most from the research Lisek started during his participation in the REU program would be numerous governmental agencies, specifically the Department of Defense and various bomb damage and threat assessment teams.

From his work within the REU program Lisek plans to pursue an article for publication highlighting his research on global planners, specifically whether a new path was returned by a global search algorithm after local constraints were applied within the program. Since Lisek plans to pursue a Ph.D. after finishing his undergraduate studies, this publication aspect of the research process, encouraged by the REU faculty advisors, is especially important.

In order to support Daoui’s research and learning experience during his time within the REU program he was paired with Dr. Zhihua Qu, a faculty member working in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Daoui stressed that Dr. Qu was both positive and supportive, advising him not only in the best methods in research and data collection, but also in organization, a key to any successful research endeavour. The learning and writing techniques advocated by the program, coupled with Qu’s helpful guidance made Daoui’s overall experience an extremely positive one, and they highlight the necessity of exposure to research for undergraduate students.