Brokoslaw Laschowski (MASc '16 PhD '21)
Alumnus, Faculty of Engineering
>Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute
Brok Laschowski is using his interdisciplinary education to integrate machine learning, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. While completing his master’s degree in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, Laschowski pursued his interest in computational neuroscience with support from his supervisor, Dr. John McPhee.
His master’s research focused on developing computational models to reverse-engineer the human motor control system based on optimization and optimal control theory. This work eventually led to his PhD research in Systems Design Engineering, which focused on autonomous robot control, again supervised by McPhee.
“I became interested in how robots learn, make decisions, and understand the world,” Laschowski said. “Although robotics had made tremendous progress, achieving robust machine intelligence in real-world environments remained a fundamental challenge.”
Bridging neuroscience and machine learning to create intelligent robots
Laschowski addressed these limitations by developing artificial intelligence (AI) for visual scene recognition and autonomous robot control. This development can allow the robot to think and control itself.
“Taking inspiration from neuroscience, the goal of our research is to develop new deep learning models for computer vision, which can advance autonomous robot control and decision-making,” says Laschowski, also a member of the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute (Waterloo.ai).
Creating the dream team of robotics researchers
The University of Waterloo is home to 74 Canada Research Chairs who are experts in their respective field pursuing groundbreaking research. As a PhD student, Laschowski recalls having the unique opportunity to work alongside two Canada Research Chairs who are also professors in the Department of Systems Design Engineering — Dr. John McPhee, Canada Research Chair in Biomechatronic System Dynamics, and Dr. Alexander Wong, Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Medical Imaging.
“It’s an honour to work with two Canada Research Chairs,” says Laschowski, who leads the project in collaboration with William McNally, also a PhD candidate in Systems Design Engineering and a member of Waterloo.ai.
Laschowski recalls the moment when their neural network started learning on his computer after many iterations. After feeling excited to witness the system teach itself, he remains positive that it could one day translate to the real-world.
“The success of this project suggests that we’ve identified something meaningful,” he says. “We were among the first groups to pursue this research back in 2018. Now our open-source dataset and models are helping create global impact on the research community. Researchers around the world are developing new controllers and machine learning algorithms for robots, for which our system can support.”
Laschowski completed his PhD in 2021 and will continue developing brain-inspired machine learning models as a researcher at the University of Toronto.