Powering Your Independence: Phillip

Phillip has had an astounding career in mathematics and robotics and is fascinated with robotic vision systems.

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:00):
Hello, I'm Stella Glory and welcome to Britain, Australia's Powering
Your Independence conversations. Where are we chatting with individuals who
are blind or have low vision who have an inspiring
story to tell while leading their independent and active lives?

(00:24):
Philip connected with Vision Australia back in the 1970s, when
technology was coming to the fore at the time, an
adaptive computer costs the same price as a house around $40000.
But technology was crucial to Philip's career and quite an

(00:46):
astounding one in mathematics and robotics. And Philip is fascinated
with robotic vision systems. I began our conversation by asking
him about this.

S2 (00:59):
Okay, well, I guess that. Came up in a in
a very natural way in one respect. Always a working
computer scientist, mathematician and I became interested in robotics and
in particular getting a robot to use a camera to

(01:26):
be able to navigate an environment as it moved through it.
And there was many, many applications in that area. One
really fun application at the beginning was in developing a
robot to play soccer. And so there was a very
small robot, you know, about half a metre tall and

(01:48):
knew they had cameras and onboard computers, and you have
to program them to see well enough to manipulate the
ball and play the game. So. In my interest in
in computer vision, then I then I became aware saying

(02:09):
T vision may be described as a mathematical process. And
I then realized that what we were doing in computer
vision had basically very, very little to do with biological systems,

(02:30):
how people see birds. Any animal that you carried in name.
And so I started thinking in terms of how do?
Biological systems he clutter, they get data from the AI
processes in the brain and then be able to take

(02:51):
some action to manipulate the world, and in the process
of doing that, I just drifted more and more into.
Trying to answer the question, how do people see what
is their brain? I combination to the see and probably

(03:16):
the last 20 years of my professional life. I had
really moved over from computer computer vision to what I
would call great biological vision in trying to achieve the
goal of writing down the mathematical equations that describe vision. No,

(03:41):
I certainly didn't achieve that. Nobody has. Yeah, it will
be done at some point of that. Totally sure. But
in answer to your question, it's been a migration of
my part from trying to get robots to see to
understand how. People say and of course. The biggest thing

(04:05):
I had going for me was my deteriorating vision, so
I had a continual it continues to experiment, landing on
asking questions, how do I see why they do things
and why can I not the things that I can't?

(04:27):
And that interplay of my interest in computer computers, mathematics, science,
my vision, my deteriorating vision and the overall fascination with
biological systems all. Just interested to. To drag me into

(04:51):
it in the way that I did, maybe one day
I'll be able to untangle that in a more, you know,
in a more logical, meaningful fashion, but I think that's
about the best I can describe it for you, just
off the top of my head.

S3 (05:05):
Yeah, I know you have an anecdote about this, about
people's response to a person who's blind working on robotic
vision systems.

S2 (05:19):
Yes. Yes, my dear daughter. At the age of 13
years old, she was invited to give a talk on
my research of computer vision and how we got robots
to defend. My daughter was asked me about that, and

(05:40):
I was really pleased that two is taking an interest
in what I was doing. So I went into some
detail and you know, the photo is pretty interested in it.
And then after I finished up with my description, she
simply said to me, Well, dad, that's really weird. Here
is a blind person telling sighted people how they think

(06:05):
and really woke me up to what my whole fascination
with this vision visual game was all about. It just
totally crystallized my interest in what really was going on.

S3 (06:23):
And it's not actually that strange a concept because there
are many. Inventions or possibilities where people with a disability
have had to. Who have in part designed to develop
something that has gone on to benefit the broader community.

S2 (06:47):
Oh yes, yeah, there's absolutely, as you say, nothing unusual
about that sort of what I just told. And yes,
the is the life is full of such examples that
you just described. And you know, I can tell you
one other story which is on that one, that similar
sort of thing. A moment when I first began my

(07:09):
university study of mathematics and one of my lecturers who
I went up to see after the first closed and say, Look,
I've got this visual disability, and you know, this is
the way I do things, and I'm just letting you
know it's no problem, but just letting you know what's
going on. And she said to me, all this is

(07:32):
going to be very difficult for you. I mean, it's
going to be difficult now. But the more you get
into mathematics, the the harder it's going to become for you.
And I didn't think too much about it, but I
went back at some time, a little bit later and back.
But I went and spoke to a one of the
few people that has my that I know have my

(07:56):
visual condition. And he at the time was the professor
of physics in the university, and I went and told
them and asked them, What do you think about, you know,
this mathematics thing, you know, getting harder and harder for me?
And he just really shook his head and laughed about it.
And he said. I can absolutely assure you nothing will

(08:19):
not be any impediment to you learning mathematics and. Your
vision condition may even be an advantage to learning, and
I want to wish that this is amazing marathon and
I had him as a working example, of course. And

(08:41):
so all of the time, this fascination, all the things
that are interested in my vision condition, they all seem
to blend in there. And you know, for me, at
least very fascinating.

S3 (08:55):
What do you think that you're lucky to have such
a curious mind? Is that your curiosity that's motivating you
or like or like which one comes first, your motivation
or your curiosity? Or are they the same thing?

S2 (09:17):
Well, I would say neither I would say that my.
Curiosity and motivation is really a result of some pretty
fabulous people that have helped me encouraged me along the

(09:37):
way and the technologies that have been available at just
the right time to allow me to move to the
next level or as it were. And all those encouragement
from people. And when I say to people the encouragement,

(09:57):
I've known a few totally blind people when I could
see it for a bit that were encouraging and then
a few people with my own eye condition and overwhelmingly
totally sighted people that were all very encouraging. And actually, though,
I shouldn't dismiss the other end of the spectrum to

(10:21):
even those people that dished up negative feedback and discouragement
they had their place to to motivate me. And but
I do have to say on on that score. I
also feel very fortunate, though, that when I came across

(10:42):
those people, they were. Just enough to toughen me up,
but not so much to break me. And so it
was a blend of. In great encouragement and support from
people that was able to cultivate curiosity, imagination and the.

(11:09):
Belief that I could do the things that

S3 (11:12):
this isn't to say you haven't had disappointments and we
had a chat a while ago about mistakes and what
type of mistakes have you made if you could conjure
up a couple for us and what what was the
importance of what's the importance to you of being allowed

(11:33):
to make mistakes?

S2 (11:36):
Yeah, okay, well, I'll just take that last part of
your question first and. They're absolutely essential in the learning
process that you really cannot learn to operate in this world,
be it, you know, with a vision, visual problem or not,

(11:58):
without making no mistake. So this is nothing unique to
visually impaired or blind, visually impaired people. It's essential to
learning to be a human being. No one was occurred
when I was a beginning academic and in the job

(12:22):
and wanting to move to another job, and I applied
for a position which I really wanted. There was a
lot of preparation for the interview, had to travel a
bit to get to the interview, and all of it

(12:42):
was quite an involved process. And so in the interview?
I go into the interview and I'm positioned in the
interview relative to the interviewing panel, and there's three people
on the panel in such a way that I was

(13:06):
out of visual contact for myself. And so the interview progressed,
and I was answering all the questions. Well, as I
was concerned, you know, really well, but I was feeling
somewhat uncomfortable about what was going on and didn't really

(13:28):
know why. Well, yeah, I did. I do. There I was,
wasn't in visual contact and there is nothing in my
resume that said, I had a visual disability. I didn't
tell them at the start of the interview that I
had a visual disability. And there's no reason why they

(13:49):
would have thought that I had a visual visual disability,
which has been the case all of my most of
my life anyway. So finish up the interview. Thinking, Hmm, yeah,
really did well with it, but just a little bit
of discomfort. Well, I didn't get the job. I got
a rejection some time later. Totally disappointed about it because

(14:12):
I was knew that I was the best person for
the job in my own mind. I was exactly I
had the experience, the qualifications and everything. And I asked
myself the crucial what did I do wrong? And I
started exploring that. Discomfort that I was feeling in the interview,

(14:35):
and at some point it dawned on me that. Gee, I.
Should have. Declared to them what my visual condition was,
I wasn't trying to hide it from, it just didn't
occur to me to declare it at the time because
I would tell people when I thought it was necessary

(14:58):
and I wouldn't talk about it if I didn't think
it was necessary. Well, I wasn't aware that at the
time that was absolutely important, that I declare my visual
condition so that they could make adjustments with the way
that they were probably interpreting my lack of eye condition

(15:21):
to not being terribly interested or any number of ways
that people interpret in a negative way. Something that doesn't
have appropriate eye contact with them. That was a major thing,
which a major mistake, which led to a very big disappointment,

(15:45):
for which there was also a mistake which I learned
from and never repeated. And all interviews that I've done
since then, I've made other mistakes for sure, but never
repeated that one.

S3 (16:02):
Just one final question now, since you retire till you
have been devoting your energy and time into writing a novel,
and you're also part of Vision Australia's client reference group.
So you keeping quite busy? Tell us a little bit
about the client reference group and your portfolio within that.

S2 (16:27):
Okay. Yeah. The client reference group is just a group of.
Clients from amongst the vision of a large population of
clients that. Report to the board of directors of Vision Australia.

(16:51):
And try to give them feedback on issues from the
client base. In terms of how Vision Australia is doing,
what could they do better and an issue that comes
up and the client reference group, is this something that

(17:12):
I ran into after I retired? All of my life
has been. Exclusively in employment and taking up all of
my time, and I've never done any volunteering and the
opportunity came up in a newsletter from Vision Australia saying that.

(17:38):
Applications are invited for representatives on the. Reference group for.
A portfolio called older adults, which was trying to represent
people over the age of 65, and I thought, well,
it sounds pretty good, and I then just applied for

(18:02):
it and was selected to to represent the older adult
population and have been on it for some four years
now and have really enjoyed it. And I would encourage anybody,

(18:24):
any client of Vision Australia to. Take part to put
in an application when vacancies become available for in a
portfolio of of their interest because it's it's it's quite

(18:45):
a good thing to be involved in it. Yes, it's
a powerfully. Important thing for Vision Australia to have people
of the client of its client base that are willing
to get up and give them feedback, the good, the

(19:06):
bad and the ugly of all the things they're doing on.
And it's a very fulfilling thing to do. So I
can only encourage anybody that just has an interest in
that type of thing. To get involved doesn't matter what
your background is. Give it a go. You have something
to contribute.

S1 (19:27):
Vision Australia is a leading national provider of blindness and
low vision services in Australia, supporting people to live life
on their terms. To find out more about how we
can help you call Vision Australia on 1800 eight four
seven four six. That's one 300 eight four seven four

(19:50):
double six.