Faculty Profile: Daniel Asmar

Professor Daniel Asmar

Daniel Asmar of the Mechanical Engineering Department, a graduate of the University of Waterloo in Canada, came to Lebanon in 1994. He received his master's at AUB in mechanical engineering and his PhD at Waterloo.

Asmar's research was focused on systems design engineering. "It sees the science of engineering as a system, a mix of interdisciplinary activities and engineering backgrounds, to integrate technologies into a system. My area of research was robotics and computer vision," he explained.

His project was SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), which involves a robot with an onboard PC. The robot is put in an environment that it doesn't know; it uses onboard sensors, like the camera and laser range finder, while it is navigating so that it produces a map of that environment and localizes its specific position. The robot in this case is used for surveying purposes and for detecting trajectories, especially in dangerous environments in which a robot can replace a human being. Asmar's addition to this research involved using a camera to locate the robot and tree trunks as features-a first-time use of natural objects.

When he came back to AUB in 2006, Asmar gave mechanical design courses for a year. He also now gives courses in vibration control, automatic control, and instrumentation and measurements. A father of two children, an eight-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son, Asmar says he came back for the social life and the family.

As for his professional life, Asmar says, "AUB is the best university; the research potential here is incredible, which gives me the better of the two worlds. It provides me with a unique research experience, with state-of-the-art equipment and opportunities for funding." In his research at AUB, Asmar plans to continue working on SLAM, as well as on omni-directional vision (panoramic camera). He also plans to work in biometrics, iris recognition, surveillance, vehicle tracking, and people tracking.