Bob Hobbs

Biography

I started out in my working life in the mining industry as a mining engineer but later converted to Computer Science subsequent to which I spent several years in the IT industry in various capacities as a Programmer, contractor, Systems Analyst, Business IT consultant and project Manager in the commercial sector , primarily in main frame and what would now be called enterprise development. It was during this time that, being responsible for the development of factory control and manufacturing systems that I became involved in the development of QA auditing and diagnostic software to facilitate quality control in manufacturing control systems. I drifted into graphics and AI development for multi-media authoring software. From here it was a short step to becoming interested in virtual reality and video gaming. Although only working briefly in this environment it became the focus of my teaching on entering the teaching profession. Since 1998 I have been engaged initially with teaching Computer Graphics and AI programming but this has naturally morphed into teaching video games programming and development in the last 6 years or so. I have been the award leader for Computer Games Programming and some other smaller related awards for the last 5 years and have recently been heavily involved with revamping and refreshing the course for the future.

Research Interest

Emotional and Cognitive AI for games and Robotics, Synthesis of Human Motion, 3D facial and gestural representation, Game Usability and QA, Computer-Aided rehabilitation.