Shinichi Hirata has been an engineer for consumer electronics products such as personal computers, entertainment robots, and gaming peripherals. His areas of technical concentration and expertise include mechanical engineering, electronics and sensor signal processing. He has also been associated with one of the major international electronics companies in the field, Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc., Tokyo Japan, in connection with the above work for over 30 years. He had researched computer vision systems for autonomous robots while studying at university. He was awarded IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Systems (IROS) Best Paper Award in 1992.