Hamze Hammami, Robotics & AI

Selected Work

Projects

AISV, Autonomous Trash Collection

A project developing new technology for autonomous trash collection on water, developed as part of the Mubadala trash-collection ASV competition. The platform brings together three parts: a collection robot (Burger), a reactive vision navigation system (SUSHI), and a development simulation (Toast).

Explore the Project Code

Robot

Burger

A seabin-inspired collection mechanism built as a compact combat robot. Smaller and cheaper than full-scale systems, designed to carry far more trash to scale.

Led by Saif Alsaad (Mechanical), Laith Mohamed (Electrical), and Abdul Maajid Aga (Embedded).

Navigation

SUSHI

The vision system for reactive, uninformed surface navigation: water-aware perception, object detection, depth estimation, multi-field path planning, and behaviour-based control.

My Contribution Led SUSHI's development and its journal paper study, and generally supervised AISV.

Toast

The simulation environment built to develop SUSHI in software first, then validate it through real-world testing.

Led by Muhammad Abban.

Post-Evolution Adaptation of Genetic Memory

E-puck robots pre-evolved in empty environments adapt Hebbian-modified MLP weights to novel obstacles on-the-fly in Webots, without retraining.

BeeBetter, Multi-modal Honeybee Monitoring

A multi-modal beehive monitoring system for honeybee health and hazard detection, combining predator detection, environmental sensing, and acoustic analysis. Currently a working abstract with a trained queen-less CRNN and bee/hornet detection, not yet deployed in a conditioned environment.

Explore the Project Code

Platform · Detection + Sensing + Sound

BeeBetter Core

Predator detection with YOLO (bee vs hornet), environmental sensing (temperature, CO2, humidity, weight), and a CRNN sound module for queen-less detection, together forming an early hazard and colony-collapse warning system.

BeeVE

MSc thesis project. VQ-VAE applied to PaSST embeddings of honeybee recordings to discover non-semantic acoustic sub-states without labels, building on BeeBetter's acoustic foundation.

Sound Localization

Developed a robot audition system for sound azimuth localization using binaural processing with a two-microphone array on an Arduino-based EMoRo robot platform.

Franka Panda Robot Planning

Interactive path planning system for a 7-DOF Franka Emika Panda robot in PyBullet. Implements RRT, A*, STOMP and polynomial interpolation from scratch with orientation-aware configurations, real-time obstacle avoidance, path smoothing, and live 3D trajectory visualisation.

Embedded AI · Camera Servoing

Eye Tracking Camera

Designed and implemented a 2-axis camera mechanism for real-time facial tracking with precise motor servoing through 360° servos on embedded hardware, using Google Coral TPU and TensorFlow Lite.

Computer Vision · Security

Facial Recognition Pipeline

Facial recognition database using Redis for user verification with liveness detection, deployed across private residence security systems.

YOLO · Vehicle Perception

Automatic Number Plate Recognition

Multi-detection system for extracting vehicle colour and license plate information through YOLO-based detection and OCR plate number extraction.

Background

Experience

Aug 2025
Present

Laboratory Assistant

Heriot-Watt School of Mathematics & Computer Science · Dubai

Lab support through demonstrations, tutorials, and coding guidance for postgraduate students
Teaching assistance for Intelligent Robotics module

Jan 2025
Present

Teaching Assistant

Heriot-Watt School of Engineering & Physical Sciences · Dubai

Lab demonstrations and tutorials across robotics and programming courses
Modules: Machine Vision, Robotics System Sciences, Praxis Programming, Praxis Electronics

Jul 2023
Dec 2023

Embedded Systems & ML Engineer

Vee Tech · Cairo

Developed the company's standard intelligent systems for Automatic Number Plate Recognition and Facial Recognition with liveness security checks
Collected and processed datasets for computer vision applications
Implemented secure embedded systems and created APIs for web and mobile integration

Apr 2023
Jun 2023

Backend Intern

Vee Tech · Cairo

Received training on the NestJS framework
Conducted testing of backend systems and SDKs
Automated backend QA testing processes

Outreach

Volunteering

Feb 2024

Dubai Future Labs × The Construct: ROS Winter Bootcamp

Dubai Future Labs · 5-Day Intensive

5-day intensive on MoveIt, SLAM, mapping, and OpenCV in ROS2, organised by Dubai Future Labs and The Construct.

2024 – 2025

Engineer for a Day, Heriot-Watt Dubai

Heriot-Watt University Dubai · Volunteer

Led Arduino programming and obstacle-detection workshops for high-school visitors. Operated the Unitree GO1 quadruped during multiple outreach events.

Oct 2024

IROS 2024, Technical Volunteer

Khalifa University · Abu Dhabi, UAE

Hardware demonstrations and interactive robotics competition at one of the world's premier robotics research conferences. Guided attendees through exhibits and hands-on demos.

2024

ITS World Congress, Robot Demonstrator

ITS World Congress · Volunteer

Operated and demonstrated university robots to visitors, engaging the public with live robotics demonstrations.