Page 170 - Modern Robotics Building Versatile Macines

150 Modern Robotics

In grammar school, Warwick became fascinated by science and
technology. He enjoyed watching science programs on television and
reading about how famous scientists such as Michael Faraday and
Humphrey Davies had made their discoveries. By his early teenage
years, that interest had expanded to science fiction, including the
British television movie Doctor Who and the Daleks, where Earth
is invaded by malevolent robots who look something like Art Deco
salt shakers. Warwick did not fit the nerd stereotype, though—he
was fond of activities more in keeping with working-class boys, such
as rooting for the Coventry soccer team and earning enough money
to buy his own motorcycle.

Working World and University

After graduating from high school, Warwick also followed more
of a working-class path: Instead of going to university, he got a
job as an apprentice telephone technician at British Telecom. The
work proved to be a pleasing mixture of intellectual challenge and
physical labor, such as digging holes and climbing poles. In his
spare time, Warwick continued his varied reading. A science fiction
novel called The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton particularly
intrigued Warwick. In the novel, surgeons attempt to change a crim-
inal’s behavior through electronically controlled nerve implants. Of
course, things go horribly wrong, but Warwick wondered if such
technology could be safely developed and used.
Eventually, Warwick felt his telephone job had become a dead
end. He obtained the necessary technical certificates, took entrance
exams and some technical courses, and in 1976, he enrolled in
Aston University in Birmingham, England. He found the three years
there to be rewarding, although he had also married, and he and his
wife, Sylvia, had to make considerable financial sacrifices. Warwick
received his undergraduate degree in 1979 and continued on in the
Ph.D. program at Imperial College, London. For his doctoral thesis,
he studied ways to monitor and correct industrial production sys-
tems automatically.
After a few years as a lecturer at the University of Newcastle and
as an Oxford Fellow, Warwick decided to look for a permanent
position. When he discovered that a professorship in cybernetics