Far from home: Swinburne student tests remote learning boundaries

Adversity drives innovation

“We have a robot at Swinburne and were planning to test and do all the computing required locally,” says Mauricio.

“When the pandemic hit we changed our approach. We worked on a robot simulation controlled by a kind of joystick (haptic device) with force feedback enabled, which I built here in Medellin. Like a computer game from Colombia on the computer in Melbourne.

“Luckily, I had my laptop with me, and with a family of nine siblings in Colombia I had some choices of where to stay. One of my brothers offered me a room and fortunately he has a good internet connection.”

Specialist pieces to keep working were begged, borrowed and sometimes even built from scratch.

“I had a 3D printer from friends and used my contacts to source equipment from engineering degree colleagues at the local university. I set up a ‘lab’ in my brother’s spare room,” Mauricio adds.

“But I needed motors, sensors and mechanical pieces, and restrictions in Colombia limited our daily movement. I sourced some items online and then designed the rest myself: creating my own parts. It took a couple of months to build, but I really learnt how to use all the tools available.”

While his research continued, Mauricio was glad to have the support of Swinburne colleagues, supervisors and friends to chat about challenges and give advice about the PhD process.

“I still feel very much a part of Swinburne. My supervisor checks in regularly to see how I’m going, not just on my project, and my friends at uni and at home are there.

“Another friend in Melbourne had a related project and is now connecting the robot for me at the Swinburne lab. Then I can connect from here to Hawthorn to move our project from the simulator to the remote control of the actual robot.

“But I miss our life in Melbourne and hope I can come back really soon to continue my studies.”