Andrija Milojevic

About

I’ve never written much about myself, but it’s always intriguing to learn about other people, no matter how ordinary they may seem. We all have a unique path and ideas, offering something valuable to the world, and we can learn from the lives we lead and the experiences we encounter.

Short about me:

. . . you can find more about me here or read below.

(image was generated with ideogram)

About me in details:

Founder & CEO, The Human Touch Robotics, Oslo (Norway) and Helsinki (Finland)

May 2019 – Present

  • 🚀 As the founder and CEO of thtRobotics, I lead a team of brilliant minds dedicated to building a future where robots aren’t just tools, but trusted companions and collaborators. We believe that by making robots smarter, we can redefine the way people live, work, and thrive, starting with automation in the food industry.
  • thtRobotics provide technology that empowers robots to do what was previously considered impossible.
  • This is the hardest thing I could figure out to do with my life. For me entrepreneurship is like the “heroes journey”. Personally the most exciting journey to the unknow…..
  • How? Got funny, crazy idea that I could solve one of the most changeling problems in robotics – adaptive manipulation of objects. Everything started in my small humble lab, when I was still in my early PhD days, thinking how I could replace this stupid robotic hand we had in the lab with the adaptive one. I worked on this problem for almost 6 years (countless days and nights). It was exciting and fun (although at times disappointing). But after many failures, trial and error, guess I got lucky and made it work (it was kind a cool when I made possible that robot grip all these soft fruits adaptively and at high speed). My girlfriend at the time and now my lovely wife, encouraged me to take it further out of the lab and make it useful for others and the world (she was my biggest support and believer). Funny enough couple of year later I founded thtRobotics.
  • There were many obstacles and hurdles that I needed to overcame (both within me and external) to lead the thtRobotics where it is now. I am humbled towards everting that happened to me and grateful to all the amazing people that helped me on my journey (especially to two former teams that were involved in thtRobotics early days). I am also so much grateful to my amazing Co-founder (who was crazy enough to believe and join me) and whole thtRobotics team who helped in shaping what thtRobotics is today and is out to become.

Associate Professor, OsloMet, Oslo, Norway

Jan 2022 – Jun 2022

  • Short and Sweet.
  • It was amazing to work as substitute Associate Professor, and teach the Instrumentation course. I transformed the whole course and put an effort to teach students something new and fun (sensors, actuators, automation, robotics). It was one of the best group of students I had opportunity to lecture (they all are amazing young people). It was so fun, and I tired to have a good time (I made a lot of jokes and show a lot of MEMES). Somehow students liked my unconventional approach to teaching. OsloMet is quite a vibrant and interesting place, with a lot to offer. I am also gratefully to my former colleagues for giving me such a warm welcome and support (although I was not much around). Great experience.

Postdoctoral Researcher, LUT University, Lappeenranta Area, Finland

Jan 2016 – Aug 2021

  • Tiny little machines. Developed novel type of robots and micro-robots.
  • Developed new robotic grippers.
  • It was a huge part of my life. The place where I grow even more as a professional and person. I had such a pleasure to work on different projects in the filed of Robotics, and build larger automation systems, starting from scratch. Did a lot of practical work, prototyping, experiments, a lot of coding and software development in the filed of Robotics, Automation, micro-robots, control. Spend long days and nights in the lab building and programming robots. It was so exciting to work on things that no one built before.
  • Learned a lot, while having fun. Met many amazing people, made friends for life, worked in team of highly professional and motivated people. Really thankful to all the people at LUT and at the Lab of Intelligent Systems, for supporting me on my carer path. Grateful to my supervisor who always supported me in what ever direction and projects I wanted to work on, and give me such a research freedom, which resulted in some really nice inventios.

Visiting Researcher, University of Oslo (UiO), Oslo, Norway

Sep 2020 – Jul 2021

  • Fast and simple. Developed a new type of locomotion robots.
  • It was so excising to build new type of robots that no one developed before. Lot of coding, then CAD designing, production, experiments and testing. Lot of trial and error experiments. Took me a huge amount of time and effort to make them walk. I was so happy and trilled when at the end they moved, and surprisingly (even for me), they were really fast (much faster then the state-of-the-art).
  • It is a special place and I had a chance to meet some really amazing and interesting people. It was so enriching experience, and very intellectually stimulated environment. Thankful for our discussions. Also a lot of fun to work with the people from ROBIN and RITMO research group. I am really gratefully to everyone who supported my visit and make me feel like I was one of their own. Also very gratefully to my supervisor who supported my research and bear with me until the end, it was truly a team work, learned a lot from him. Sorry University of Oslo, for messing your labs, and doing crazy experiments (a lot of things went wrong, luckily noting blow up), but I was in my “creative world”.

Founder, Tywai, Helsinki, Finland

Jun 2018 – Feb 2019

  • At Tywai Ltd we build tools based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to empower companies and people to automatically add advertisement on photos and videos (with just one click). By using cutting edge computer vision and machine learning techniques our software enables to avoid manual altering and curating advertisement with time consuming traditional tools.
  • Had great pleasure to work with amazing people building really cool ML and CV technology. Felt like I was “living in the future”. Learned a lot about startups, what works what not, it was so fun, enjoyable and exciting. I am grateful to the team and my co-founder for undertaking this endeavour and going on this journey.

Teaching and Research Assistant, University of Niš, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Mechatronics and Control, Nis, Serbia

Apr 2013 – Oct 2018

  • The place where I started to grow and develop as Reacher and Lecturer. Thought best job ever (at that time). It was a big part of my life and my experience here influenced my future carrier greatly. Learned a lot of different things in the wide field of Robotics, Mechatronics and Automation and how to build different real world systems. Place where I did a large part of my PhD thesis. I also learned a lot about human nature here. Worked with some amazing people, and I am very thankfully for all the lessons and talks we had. It was fun while lasted, but at the end decided that I want to move onto something else.
  • Enjoyed working on different projects and with students, try to pass them the things I learned and am passionate about.
  • I done my PhD and taught the following courses (don’t ask how is possible to teach 10 courses and do your PhD in parallel):
  • Mechanisms and Machines;
  • Design of Mechanisms;
  • Mechatronics;
  • Micro-mechatronics;
  • Components of Mechatronic Systems;
  • Optical Elements in Mechatronics;
  • Production of Mechatronic Elements and Components;
  • Engineering Graphics;
  • Information Technology 1 (technical drawing with engineering graphics for Management students).

Visiting Researcher, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Nov 2016 – 1 mo.

  • My second visit at TU Berlin. Had great opportunity to do a part of my PhD experiments and measurements at TU Berlin. Really nice group of people and thanks for such a warm welcome and all the support with measurements and experiments. Hope I didn’t mess your Lab to much (I like to experiment, which does not end great always).

Researcher, TU Ilmenau, Ilmenau, Germany

Sep 2015 – Oct 2015

  • This is my 4th research stay at TU Ilmenau. I already felt like home (although a bit sad for being away from my girlfriend, now fiancé, hope soon to get married). Done further research, prototyping and experiments for my PhD, developing funny soft robotic systems based on my optimization algorithms. I was so happy and excited, because it worked.
  • Really grateful to my Serbian friend who supported me and help with some lab experiments, as he was visiting as well working on his PhD thesis. Also to my German friend who supervised my stay at TU Ilmeanu. I learned a lot from him, and I am thankful for our discussions and talks.

Visiting Researcher, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Jul 2015 · 1 mo

  • Had great pleasure to work with people from TU Berlin and do experiments and measurements with piezoelectric actuators I was playing around. It was so fun as we need to power them at 220 V at high frequency and I learned how to develop a control for these type of actuators, It is funny as later I used this knowledge to develop some more advanced robots that use PZT actuators. Thankful to my Professor from Serbia for this great opportunity!

Researcher, TU Ilmenau, Ilmenau, Germany

Aug 2014 – Sep 2014

  • According to my friends, I was already an “old rabbit” here. I was at TU Ilmenau for my 3rd research visit (see below the beginning of a story). Worked on my PhD research developing novel optimization methods and algorithms for application in robotics. Beside this we accidently developed a new low cost smart material based sensors (worked great, kind of). Also worked on smart material based actuators. I didn’t need to do so many diverse things for my PhD, but I was very curios and wanted to combine different fields (they told me my PhD combined 3 different areas of research, for me it was just one big FUN).
  • Grateful to my friend from Serbia who was also a researcher with me and supported me greatly and worked together with me long days and nights to make the experiments happen. Probably prevent me to blow up the Lab (sorry TU Ilmeanu), Also grateful to my other friend from the TU Ilmenau department who supervised my work.

Researcher, University of Niš, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Mechatronics and Control, Nis, Serbia

Oct 2012 – Apr 2013

  • Next phase of me as a Researcher. Continue working on the robotic C-arm system for automating recoding of patients spine (doctors lees exposed to radiation, less painful for patients). Assembling, testing and experimentation time. Noting worked as modelled, but I learned a valuable lessons never to trust Platonify analytical models.
  • About a project. Worked in a larger team where we developed a robotic C-arm system for automating process of recording a patients spine during surgery. The idea was to developed a fully robotized teleoperate system, so that doctors can do operations from their office and control the robot remotely. Pertly cool. (project funded by Republic of Serbia). Gratefully for the opportunity.

Researcher, TU Ilmenau, Ilmenau, Germany

Aug 2012 – Sep 2012

  • I liked it so much that I decided to come again. Same group of people (now they showed me a bit of Germany and their way of living). Really enjoyed in working long hours in the lab on development of new mechanisms with flexure hinges and started working on my PhD thesis. I was really young, but really passionate about working on new things and inventing the future (so I believed back then, silly me).

Researcher, University of Niš, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Mechatronics and Control, Nis, Serbia

Oct 2011 – Aug 2012

  • First beginnings as a Researcher. Learned a lot, it was fun.
  • Worked in a larger team where we developed a robotic C-arm system for automating process of recording a patients spine during surgery. The idea was to developed a fully robotized teleoperate system, so that doctors can do operations from their office and control the robot remotely. Pretty cool. (project funded by Republic of Serbia). Gratefully for the opportunity.

Researcher, TU Ilmenau, Ilmenau, Germany

Jul 2011 – Aug 2011

  • First experience abroad. I met a lot of amazing people, one of which is my great friend even today. Learned how to do a proper science. Done some cool stuff in the filed of optimal design of high precision mechanisms. I am really thankful to all the people that make this visit and research possible for me.

Junior Mechanical Engineer (internship), MING production and engineering, Nis, Serbia

Oct 2010 · 1 mo

  • My first try as an Engineer in a company. Interesting experience. and I meet some good people.
    I was trying to do a 3D CAD design of mechanical parts for railway systems. Later saw they really produced them.