Ben Allen

PhD supervisors: Martin Garrad, Carlos Cifuentes

PhD title: The Embodiment Enigma: Demystifying Embodiment Through Refining Assistive Devices to Conquer Abandonment, Reduce Cognitive Load, and Foster User Ownership and Acceptance

Biography

I started my robotics journey by undertaking an integrated Masters in Mechatronics and Robotics at the university of Liverpool. From this I helped to restart and reinvent the coding and robotics society leading me to work on robots for international competitions as well as teaching skills to anyone who was interested.

During my studies I took a year out to work for a SME consultancy firm called DefProc Engineering. The work ranged massively as some weeks we would be creating sensors to measure water levels and others large scale interactive games projected on the sides of historical buildings. The skills from this enabled me to create a rehabilitative feeding system for my master’s project, which used EMG sensors to allow a user to bring food items to themselves utilising a robot arm. This project sparked my passion in assistive robotics, and I hope to undertake my research in the field of adaptive and low-cost rehabilitative exoskeletons.

Outside of my research I can often be found restoring old tools and furniture, baking or trying to create robots and gadgets from pop culture.

2022 Cohort