Eustace Mwaura
Bsc. Computer Technology Student
About
A Computer Technology student and robotics enthusiast interested in bridging low-level embedded systems with high-level robotic behaviors, and in how robots sense, reason, and act around people.
Research Focus
Human-Robot Interaction, retrieval-grounded conversational systems for humanoid robots, and autonomous system architecture.
Biography
Eustace is an undergraduate intern at the JKUAT Social Robotics Lab, where his main project is a retrieval-augmented conversational system for NAO that turns the robot into an interactive explainer on neurodiversity topics for neurotypical audiences in classroom settings. The work spans grounding the robot's dialogue in verified sources, handling live speech input, and ensuring safe deployment on a physical robot through motion and autonomous-life management. He also supports lab operations and digital infrastructure. Beyond the lab, he works on autonomy in physical systems: collaborating on the system architecture of a custom autonomous quadcopter using ROS 2 and Gazebo, and serving as computer vision lead for Team Probity002 in the Cars4Mars African Rover Challenge. The connection back to social robotics is the sensing-and-deciding layer, whether the input is terrain or a person, the underlying problem is perceiving an environment and choosing a response in real time.
Education & Qualifications
Bachelor of Science in Computer Technology
Current Pursuits
Bachelor of Science in Computer Technology; working toward postgraduate research in cognitive robotics and autonomous systems.
Specialization
Retrieval-augmented generation, NAO/NAOqi development, educational HRI, computer vision, embedded microcontrollers, robotics simulation (ROS 2/Gazebo), autonomous system architecture