Robots, roots, and the road home

“Kids had to work side by side with their parents,” he recalled. “You had about ten kids working just for a small amount of food.”

It made a deep impression.

He remembers thinking like the engineer he would later become: what if machines could take on the hardest and most dangerous tasks? What if children didn’t have to risk injury to keep their families afloat?

At the time, he didn’t know robotics. But he had seen remote-controlled toy cars. So the idea started to form - science-fictional, maybe, but persistent.

“I was thinking about remote-control tractors,” he said. “There was nothing like that in my country back in 1985, but the dream was there.”

That childhood thought eventually carried him across four continents, two PhDs, and a career that now places him among the top 1% of scientists worldwide.

And in 2025, it brought him to SDU as Assistant Professor of Robotics, and DIAS as one of our latest fellows.

Engineering with a human purpose

Redmond describes his research modestly as “technology adaptation for sustainable agriculture,” but the scope is enormous. Over the past 15 years, he has worked on digital agriculture, IoT automation, collision avoidance for electric tractors, wireless sensor networks, indoor farming robotics, and systems that allow humans to control machines from hundreds of kilometers away without relying on existing infrastructure.

The motivation behind it all is simple and deeply human.

“At the end, we want technology to make life easier for humans,” he said.

For him, agriculture is one of the clearest places where robotics can make a profound difference. The field work he witnessed as a child still echoes in his thinking today.

“Some agricultural environments are not where humans can survive. It’s dangerous. You have snakes, scorpions, bad weather… And a lot of people lose their lives in the field,” he explained. “Society needs engineering solutions to remove humans from these harsh conditions as much as possible.”

He sees it not just as a technological challenge, but a moral one - protecting people, increasing safety, and giving farmers reliable systems that actually work in remote, infrastructure-poor regions.

The spark that became a calling

Redmond’s academic path began in mechanical engineering, driven by curiosity more than a clear plan. But once he encountered control systems and robotics during his graduate studies, something clicked.

“This became my passion,” he said. “I can sit down and write code for 18 hours and never get tired. You design something, and then it becomes alive.”

He still remembers the thrill of building the robots that his parents - thousands of kilometers away - can operate from their living room in Iran.

“They are my first testers,” he laughed. “When they miss me, they click a button and something moves on my desk.”

What began as a childhood fantasy became a direct line home.

Why DIAS? “They told me I could be the best version of myself.”

When asked why he applied for DIAS, his answer is immediate.

“DIAS has high ambitions,” he said. “They told me I could be the best version of myself.”

It was the promise of intellectual freedom, curiosity-driven exploration, and a community of excellent researchers across disciplines that convinced him Denmark was the right next home.

At SDU, his work will focus on robotic systems for intercropping - fields where multiple crops grow together for sustainability and resilience. It’s a complex challenge that demands adaptability, perception, and intelligent decision-making from machines.

But Redmond lights up at complexity. For him, it’s the gateway to innovation. 

A future rooted in care and curiosity

Throughout his story, a pattern emerges: Redmond designs technology not for its own sake, but to give people safety, dignity, and better choices.

He builds robots so fewer children have to work at dawn.
He designs networks so farmers in remote fields can work safely and efficiently.
He explores sustainability because the world depends on it.

What began in a village during wartime has grown into a global vision:
a future where agriculture becomes safer, smarter, and more humane - through engineering guided by compassion.

And at DIAS, he now has the room to imagine it fully.