FUTURE INNOVATORS
GRACE BROWN
2021 Future Innovators Award winner and engineering student leading a team creating Abi, an autonomous companion robot.
“My dream is to push the state of the art of robotics in Australia,” says Grace Brown, an undergraduate mechatronics engineering student at the University of Melbourne. That dream is Abi, an autonomous bipedal humanoid robot which will be able to carry out simple tasks in a hospital setting but also act as a companion that can respond to conversation and give hugs. Inspired by Baymax, the healthcare companion robot from Disney’s , Brown first pitched the idea to the Melbourne Space Program, a select group of talented university students working on complex projects. Since her idea was accepted, she has recruited a team of 19 undergrad and post-grad students attracted by the technical challenges involved, not least the stabilisation and control algorithms required for Abi’s ‘walking’ movement. Brown has raced ahead of her studies, consuming Masters-level content and extra reading to grapple with the complicated mathematics required. For now,
