Khawaja Fahad Iqbal

Introduction

Dr. Khawaja Fahad Iqbal is an Assistant Professor and Post-Graduate Program Coordinator at the Department of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (SMME), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan. He is also serving as the Co-Principal Investigator of Intelligent Robotics Lab (IRL) at the National Center of Artificial Intelligence (NCAI), Pakistan. 

He is the founding CEO of Rising Automation Pvt. Ltd. which is a spin-off of NUST registered with the National Science and Technology Park (NSTP). It provides consultancy and training to the traditional institutes, local industries, and SMEs and helps them automate their products and services. 

Dr. Fahad obtained his PhD degree in Robotics in 2022 and MS degree in Bioengineering and Robotics in 2017 from Tohoku University, Japan. He received the Japanese Government (MEXT) scholarship for both his MS and PhD. He completed his BE degree in Mechatronics Engineering from NUST in 2011. 

He is a member of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, MEXT Alumni Association of Pakistan (MAAP), and Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC). He has authored over 20 research papers in well-reputed international journals and peer-reviewed conferences. His research interests include Collaborative Robots, Motion Planning, Reinforcement Learning, Natural Language Processing, Augmented Reality, and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). 

In his free time, he loves to read books, watch documentaries, write blogs, and come up with plans to make the world a better place.

News

2023

09th August 2023: Attended the AI Task Force meeting chaired by Minister Ahsan Iqbal at Pakistan Secretariat, Islamabad and presented the recommendations as the lead for "AI in Manufacturing" team.

04th August 2023: I was invited to the premier of  "Ba'tie Girl" held at the Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA) organized by Hunerkada Film & Media.

04th August 2023: Evaluated the projects of Robotics and AI bootcamp held at NCAI.

02nd August 2023: Our research paper "Dynamic Goal Tracking for Differential Drive Robot using Deep Reinforcement Learning" has been accepted in Springer Nature's journal Neural Processing Letters (Q2, impact factor 3.1).

26th July 2023: I appeared as a guest on SUNO FM 89.4's program Mornings with Danish. We discussed the prospects of IT and AI in Pakistan. Here is the video of that session. 

18th July 2023: Gave an invited talk on the topic, "Robotics & AI: My Journey So Far" to the student of AI Bootcamp organized by NCAI.

18th July 2023: Demonstrated the projects of RISE lab the 2x member delegation from Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, Turkey.

18th July 2023: Demonstrated the projects of RISE lab to more than 200x students of NUST Summer School.

07th July 2023: We are delighted to welcome an international student in RISE Lab. Ahmed Ashraf Fareed from Egypt is going to do a one month internship with us. During this internship, he is going to work on Control of Mobile Robots in.sha.Allah.

05th July 2023: Gave an invited talk on the topic "The World After ChatGPT and Its Impact on Chem-Bio Defense" during the Seminar on Chem-Bio Threat & Response held at the National Centre for Physics, Islamabad.

02nd July 2023: Served as Proctor for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) held at the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad.

23rd June 2023: Conducted the written test and interviews of candidates for the Japanese Government (MEXT) scholarships for undergraduates studies at the Embassy of Japan in Pakistan.

21st-22nd June 2023: Conducted interviews of 33x candidates for the 10x Japanese Government (MEXT) scholarships for research students (MS & PhD) at the Embassy of Japan in Pakistan.

09th June 2023: Conducted interviews of 35x candidates for the 5x NUST-Coventry Master Student Placements (MSP) and 16x PhD positions.

07th-08th June 2023: Conducted the skills test of ~70 students of NUST for the Master Students Placement (MSP) and PhD scholarships at Coventry University.

05th-09th June 2023: Carried out my duties as the Lead from NUST for the NUST-Coventry Master Student Placement (MSP) program.

05th-09th June 2023: Taught a short course on "Practical Reinforcement Learning" with Prof. James Brusey (Coventry University) to 33x students. Here is the website of this course: https://sites.google.com/coventry.ac.uk/practicalreinforcementlearning

31st May 2023: Attended the Leaders in Islamabad Business Summit 2023: The Big Rethink held at Serena Hotel, Islamabad.

25th May 2023: A final year project I supervised, titled "Autonomous Weeding Mobile Robot", was declared the 3rd overall best project out of the 39x total projects on display at SMME Open House. The team was awarded with a prize money of 60,000/- PKR (30,000/- each by both BEMSOL Private Limited and Cowlar Inc.) . This project is from the domain of Agricultural Robotics. In this project, my students developed a mobile robot that could autonomously navigate in a field, detect weeds in it, and kill the weeds using laser without damaging the crop being cultivated in the field. 

26th April 2023: Attended the webinar of IEEE Standards Association on "Risk-Based Methodology for Deriving Scenarios for Testing Artificial Intelligence Systems".

06th April 2023: Demonstrated the projects of RISE lab to 25 students and 5 fellows of Teach for Pakistan (TFP) during their visit to NUST.

27th March 2023: Served as Deputy Superintendent during the Mid Semester Exams (MSE) at SMME, NUST from 27th-29th March 2023.

15th March 2021: Our research paper titled "Techno-Economic Analysis of Vacuum Membrane Distillation for Seawater Desalination" has been published by Membranes journal (impact factor 4.562 , Q1 Polymer Science).

13th January 2023: Served as Superintendent during the End Semester Exams (ESE) at SMME, NUST on 13th January 2023.

11th January 2023: Served as Deputy Superintendent during the End Semester Exams (ESE) at SMME, NUST from 11th-12th January 2023.

2022

08th Dec 2022: Demonstrated the projects of RISE lab to 6 students and 2 faculty members of Help in Need (Orphans) school during their visit to NUST.

15th-17th Nov 2022: I attended the IDEAS conference at Expo Center Karachi. I have served as the Associate Editor for this year's conference Alhumdulillah. 

09th Nov 2022: Attended a webinar on "How to Be a Peer Reviewer" organized by SAGE Publishing.

08th Nov 2022: A portion of my PhD thesis has been included as a chapter in the book "Human-Robot Collaborations in Industrial Automation" (ISBN 978-3-0365-5213-2) published by MDPI. 

30th Oct - 11th Nov 2022: I conducted a two weeks Rrobotics workshop called ROBOGEN at Lincoln Corner ITU at Arfa Tower. This workshop was designed for 20 female students from government schools.

18th October 2022: Demonstrated the projects of RISE Lab to Prof. Konstantinos Salonitis, Deputy Director Manufacturing & Materials Theme and Head of Sustainable Manufacturing Systems, Cranfield University, UK .

10th October 2022: I attended the talk of Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan at NUST.

27th Sep 2022: I attended the IEEE Metaverse Congress: Developing and Deploying the Metaverse.

16th Sep 2022: I have been appointed as a Co-Prinicpal Investigator of the Intelligent Robotics Lab (IRL) at the National Center of Artificial Intelligence (NCAI).

15th Sep 2022: A final year project I supervised titled "Autonomous Mobile Robot for Picking and Placing Packages in a Warehouse" has been selected for funding by Ignite National Grassroots Research Initiative (NGIRI).

25th Aug 2022: I have been given the additional responsibility of Post Graduate (PG) Coordinator for the Department of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at NUST.

20th Aug 2022: In Fall 2022 semester, I will be teaching two courses i.e. RIME-837: Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), and EE-103: Electrical Engineering.

01st Aug 2022: I was interviewed by NHK-Urdu Radio about my study and research experience in Japan.

22nd July 2022: Demonstrated the projects of RISE lab to 65 students and 9 faculty members of NJV Higher Secondary School (Karachi) during their visit to NUST.

19th July 2022: Demonstrated the projects of RISE lab to more than 100  participants of  NUST Summer School.

06th June 2022: Served as Deputy Superintendent during the End Semester Exams (ESE) at SMME, NUST from 6th-10th January.  

30th-31st March 2022: Served as Exhibits Chair for the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence  (ICAI 2022).

30th March 2022: Chaired a session during the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence  (ICAI 2022).

02nd Mar 2022: Attended the training program on Public Speaking arranged by Professional Development Center (PDC), NUST. 

24th Feb 2022: Presented the projects of RISE lab to 45 students and 9 faculty members of Cadet College Mastung during their visit to NUST.

19th Feb 2022: Reviewed 5 papers for the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence  (ICAI 2022).

11th Feb 2022:  Evaluated the Final Year Projects of Mechanical engineering students (batch ME-10) of SMME, NUST.

31st Jan 2022: In the Spring 2022 semester, I am teaching two courses i.e. RIME-816: Robot Design and RM-898: Research Methodology.

26th Jan 2022:  Presented our research paper titled "An Adaptive Nuero-Fuzzy Inference System to Solve Perceptual Aliasing for Autonomous Mobile Robots" at the 27th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics (AROB 2022).

21st Jan 2022: Attended the Annual General Meeting of IEEE Islamabad Section at Islamabad Club.

10th Jan 2022: Participated in the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) Working group for IEEE P3107™ Standard Terminology for Human-Robot Interaction.

10th Jan 2022: Served as Deputy Superintendent during the End Semester Exams (ESE) at SMME, NUST from 10th-14th January. 

2021

19th Dec 2021: Alhumdulillah. Our research paper "A Real-Time Motion Planning Scheme for Collaborative Robots using HRI-based Cost Function" has become the most read paper in the history of International Journal of Mechatronics and Automation (IJMA).

04th Dec 2021: Our research paper titled "A Human-Following Motion Planning and Control Scheme for Collaborative Robots Based on Human Motion Prediction" has been published by Sensors journal (impact factor 3.567, Q1 Instrumentation).

23rd Nov 2021: I got a chance to talk about Artificial Intelligence, its applications and its prospects in Pakistan in the program "Suno Morning with Danish" on Suno FM 89.4. You can watch the video of that session here.

08th Oct 2021: I have been nominated to represent my department at NUSTxKarachi 2021 at DHA Country & Golf Club, Karachi, Pakistan. I will present our project "Sakura Wheelchair".

13th Sep 2021: In the Fall 2021 semester, I will teach three courses i.e. EE-103 Electrical Engineering, ME-489 Robotics and Automation, and RIME-837 Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM).

01st Sep 2021: I have been appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (SMME), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Sector H-12, Islamabad, Pakistan.

22nd Aug 2021: An emotional moment for me. I have returned to Pakistan after staying in Japan for 7 years. May Allah give me the strength, courage and vision to serve my country well.

02nd Aug 2021: I have just received the second dose of moderna vaccine. This completes the covid-19 vaccination process for me.

19th Mar 2021: Our research paper titled "A real-time motion planning scheme for collaborative robots using HRI-based cost function" has been published in the Internationl Journal of Mechatronics and Automation (IJMA).