Communications and Marketing | Alumni Office
Abheek Bose, Autonomous systems
No, Abheek Bose does not believe that robots will take over the world at some point. Autonomous systems are becoming increasingly intelligent and complex. "But robots will probably never possess many of the qualities that characterise life and are necessary to make important decisions in a meaningful way: Gut instinct, for example, passion or caring."
The 35-year-old Indian, a graduate of the Autonomous Systems Master's programme at H-BRS in 2005, is less concerned with such horror scenarios anyway. He is more interested in the very practical side of robotics: how it can be useful not only in industry, but also in the home, healthcare and playrooms. He has even founded two companies of his own in his home city of Bangalore.
In principle, Lego laid the foundation for his career: "Since I was seven years old, I've always loved building things and experimenting with technology." Lego technic, with which you can build real machines, particularly appealed to him. And the film "Transformers", in which robots that can transform into vehicles actually fight for world domination. "When I was about ten years old, I managed to build a robot out of Lego that could be turned into a car in just a few simple steps," Bose recalls with a beaming smile. "From then on, I realised what I would do later on."
Bose pursued his path with determination. He was already planning a career as a robotics engineer at the age of 16. After completing a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at home, his father, a software specialist who had travelled the world for his company, advised him to do his master's degree in Germany. "'There's excellent engineering training there,' he told me," Bose recalls. He decided in favour of "Autonomous Systems" at H-BRS because it seemed particularly versatile to him. And indeed: "I learnt all the important technical principles and developments. But that's not all: as co-founder of the Robo Cup team, with which we even took part in the 2004 World Championships for robot football, I also gained experience in team building and management. That was enormously helpful for founding my start-ups later on."
After graduating, Bose went back to India and initially worked for various software companies. "Modern robotics requires many different skills, including programming and computer science in addition to mechanical and electrical engineering. "I still had weaknesses in the latter two, which I compensated for with jobs in the software sector." So now the time had come: in 2009, he founded the company "Robots Alive", which develops low-cost industrial robots. This gave rise to the spin-off "Applied Robotics" in 2013, which is dedicated to robotic applications for mobile platforms such as mobile phones and tablets, i.e. for the consumer market.
However, both start-ups are currently on hold and the twelve employees are pursuing other full-time careers. Bose himself has been working for the large robotics company "Systemantics India" for six months, where he is gaining further experience and making contacts. "It turned out that we need international cooperation partners to be able to realise our ideas at Robots alive at acceptable prices. We are now looking for these partners before we continue."
Bose still gets the odd bit of advice from his two favourite professors at H-BRS. "I was not only able to talk shop about technical details with Prof Plöger and Prof Prassler when I was a student, but also get tips," he says. He recently returned to his former university after ten years for an alumni conference and finally met Plöger in person again. As well as some former fellow students: Bose founded the Facebook group "International Alumni of Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg" with them during the meeting (https://www.facebook.com/groups/hbrsa/).
The now married Indian also has vivid memories of the Rhineland's festive culture. Of carnival and the Popkomm music fair, for example. And of a student party at which he cooked everyone the Indian chicken speciality "tandoori". "But I made it less spicy than we are used to in India."
Abheek Bose likes to be creative and yet stringent. He also tries to convey this to the next generation of Indian engineers when they meet for "meet-ups", where professionals from science and practice explain to students and interested laypeople how robotics works. After all, not everyone in India has Lego at home to teach themselves.
Text: Jan Berndorff
During the alumni conference in September 2015, we asked Abheek Bose to make a video statement about his time as a student at the university, which you can watch here.