Meet the two freshers who created the robot everyone is talking about

When I think of freshers, I think of nights out ending in throwing guts up outside the local drinking establishment and day spent nursing a hangover, only to repeat the cycle the very next day.

Not for the two  freshers, yes freshers who created Hugh. Meet Pasi, nicknamed “the suave one” by his classmates and Ariel Ladegård, the rocket scientist (if you ever meet him, I suggest you to avoid the term: he doesn’t really like it).

Ariel, the rocket scientist enjoying his free time

Pasi actually doing some work … hope he is not posing just for the picture

They both just decided to spend their free time designing and building Hugh.

We caught up with the two mad scientists in training and asked a few questions.

one of the snapshots we got from Pasi’s complex idea

How did You come up with the idea of Hugh?

Pasi: “I was watching painfully bad video on how to use the book search for the library and the number of steps involved in the process were just too many. It really seemed too cumbersome, so I thought there’s got to be an easier way. A day later, I had the blueprint for the robot and how its brain would work”.

So Why exactly do you hate being called a rocket scientist?

Ariel: “You’re the payload manager for one rocket campaign, and suddenly you’re a rocket scientist. Joking aside though, I studied space science in college and had the opportunity to participate in a student-led rocket campaign from Andøya Rocket Range. It’s not as if that term is taken too seriously by people anyway, it’s not exactly rocket science, you know. Or should I say, if that is the definition of rocket science then being a rocket scientist is not exactly rocket science”.

What was the process that you had to go through for bringing your idea to life?

Pasi: “Firstly, I didn’t have the complete technical skill set to build Hugh on my own. But having been an entrepreneur for years, I knew what I had to do to make it happen. First step was to get permission from the university’s information service, library, comp science department, to discuss with the research and business department. I then met Ariel, who is a bit of a technical wizard and would help design build the robot. I had to raise private funding from venture capitalists and a corporation to pay for the parts . Then I had to have all the 3D visuals and designs created. We did a presentation to the entire library and information service staff, before finalising technical details.”

How many people do you need to build Hugh?

Pasi: “Currently we have a team of students working with us and we hope to have Hugh ready soon.The people working with us are: Domic O’Connor, Kallah Sortland, Farouk Jouti and Jessica Rawcliffe (the non-tech memeber).”

Why did you chose students and not professionals?

Pasi: “There are a lot of very talented students at Aberystwyth, I figured it would be a great opportunity and fun to challenge ourselves by sticking to only university resources and talent wherever possible. There are certain aspects such as building Hugh’s outer shell that we may need to contract externally but ultimately, in an ideal world, I would like to keep it all under our responsibility.”

Hugh Owen library in all his splendour

How do you think Hugh is going to influence the library?

Pasi: “Hugh follows a trend we see in the world where everything happens better and faster, for instance our dry cleaner, instant photos, three minutes take away, next day delivery, etc. So though some could argue Hugh only saves students a few minutes, when you are stressed out and you got a paper due, the last thing you need is to spend fifteen minutes trying to figure out the dewey decimal system and how it correlates to locations of books.”

Finally, why the name Hugh?

Pasi: “The first version of the robot is designed around Aberystwyth university’s Hugh Owen library. This is the birth place of this innovation and it’s only natural we name it after the library founder.”