Richard Vaughan

Timeline

1. 1993–1999

   A robot sheepdog at Oxford

   He earns a BA in artificial intelligence at the University of Sussex in 1993 and a DPhil in computation at the University of Oxford in 1999. He is the research student on the Robot Sheepdog Project at Oxford, run with Stephen Cameron from 1996 to 1998. Its robot uses a fixed camera and a mathematical model of duck behaviour to herd a flock of ducks from one end of an arena to a specified position at the other end.

2. 1998–2003

   Player Project at USC

   He is a postdoc at the University of Southern California from 1998 to 2001. In 2000, he co-founds the Player Project there with Brian Gerkey and Andrew Howard; the free, open-source robotics software is widely used in research and education. From 2001 to 2003, he is a member of technical staff at HRL Laboratories.

3. 2006–2007

   Directing the Autonomy Lab

   As an assistant professor of computing science at Simon Fraser University, he directs the Autonomy Laboratory, which builds life-like machines to increase the autonomy of robots. In 2006–2007, he joins SFU colleagues Henry Daniel and Ted Kirkpatrick on the SSHRC-funded Intelligent Dancing Machines project, which creates a performance that blends robot and human.

4. 2015–2019

   IEEE RAS Administrative Committee

   In 2015, he is elected to the managing committee of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and serves on its Administrative Committee until 2019.

5. March 2017

   Grant to study animal flocks

   In March 2017, he wins a US$1M research grant from the Human Frontier Science Program, together with Alex Thornton of Exeter and Nick Ouellette of Stanford, to study the heterogeneous structure of animal flocks.

6. 2017

   Program Chair of IROS 2017

   He serves as Program Chair of IROS 2017 in Vancouver, with Hong Zhang as General Chair. The conference draws 2,678 paid registrations and is the largest technical robot conference ever held.

7. 2018

   A President's Faculty Lecture

   In November 2018, he gives an SFU President's Faculty Lecture in Surrey on vision-mediated interaction with teams of driving and flying robots. His research includes the first robot control of animal behaviour and the first barehanded human interaction with unmanned aerial vehicles. The Autonomy Lab he directs applies AI-based sensing techniques to robot navigation and human-robot interaction.

8. As of October 2026

   Engineering manager at Apple

   He is an AI/ML Senior Engineering Manager at Apple in Cupertino, California. He has been on leave from Simon Fraser University, where he is a professor of computing science, since 2018.