Ahmad ‘Athif
Mohd Faudzi
Professor of Robotics, UTM · Founder, A2Tech Sdn Bhd
I build robots that leave the laboratory — soft actuators, underwater vehicles and field robots, taken through to patents and products.
- Soft robotics
- Field robotics
- Underwater systems
- Control & AI
What I do
Five roles, one thread
Research that becomes hardware, and hardware that reaches people.
Research
Soft pneumatic actuators, McKibben muscles and the predictive control that makes them precise.
Commercialisation
Founder of A2Tech Sdn Bhd, a UTM spin-off holding licences to five lab technologies.
Industry & institutions
Petronas, Dyson, UMW, Sime Darby, MPOB and partner universities across Asia and Europe.
Keynote speaking
17 keynotes and 50+ invited talks across 8 countries on robotics, AI and commercialisation.
Impact
Search and rescue, COVID-19 ventilators, water quality, biodiversity and safer harvesting.
Supervision
9 PhD candidates as main supervisor, 29 masters students and 3 postdoctoral researchers.
Systems built
Robots in the field
Several are patented and licensed to industry.
ROV Pleco
Cleans water tanks from the inside with a deformable suction head.
INSPECTO
Inspects and cleans HVAC ducts where people cannot go.
LuminUV
Autonomous UVC disinfection robot, built during COVID-19.
X3Cator
Search and rescue reconnaissance robot for the Fire Department.
Loose fruit collector
Tele-operated SCARA arm collecting palm oil fruit with AI vision.
Precision biodiversity
Drones, IoT and quadrupeds mapping Pasoh Forest Reserve.
IKAROS
Indoor inspection aerial robot for confined spaces.
Soft rehab gloves
Braided actuators driving hand exercises after stroke.
Partners
Industry, government, universities
Selected collaborations from the last decade.
2025–28 Consultant, robotics and automation CENTEXS Sarawak
2023–25 Industry 4.0 and AI for manufacturing Dyson Manufacturing · CREST
2023–24 National Border Control System, technical lead Ministry of Home Affairs
2022–25 Pilot programme on precision biodiversity Academy of Sciences Malaysia
2021 Autonomous disinfection robots UMW Corporation
2019 Exoskeleton for fruit bunch cutters Sime Darby Plantation
2018–19 CEO@Faculty Fellow, telepresence robotics Ericsson Malaysia
2015–17 Visiting Research Fellow Tokyo Institute of Technology
Research
Focus areas
Selected publications
Application of fuzzy logic sliding mode control with PID structure for electro-hydraulic actuator tracking IEEE Access · 2025 Q2
WaveLiteDehaze-Network: a low-parameter wavelet method for real-time dehazing CAAI Trans. Intelligence Technology · 2025 Q1
Chorda dorsalis system as a paragon for soft medical robots Biomimetics · 2024 Q1
Fuzzy fractional order PID tuned via PSO for a pneumatic actuator with ball beam system Fractal and Fractional · 2023 Q1
Performance evaluation of braided McKibben actuators in telescopic nested structure IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters · 2022 Q2
Long-legged hexapod Giacometti robot using thin soft McKibben actuators IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters · 2018 Q2
Contact
Let’s build something
Open to research collaboration, industry consultancy and speaking invitations.
- athif@utm.my
- Office
- +607 553 5291
- Laboratory
- +607 555 8576
- Address
-
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
81310 Johor Bahru, Johor - Lab
- a2lab.utm.my
