Kalevi Hyyppä

About me

Me and my family

I was born in Helsinki, Finland, on January 5, 1941. Most of my childhood I spent in Övertorneå, a small village in northern Sweden. My mother tongue is Swedish even though my first language was Finnish. I am a citizen of Sweden.

I met my wife Gunhild in 1958 and we married in 1964. She is now retired but has been a high school teacher in physics and mathematics. Our daughter Maria was born in 1977. She has studied industrial economics at Linköping University and is presently working in Stockholm.

What I do at my work

I am a Professor Emeritus at Luleå University of Technology.

My research area is: optoelectronics, mechatronics and autonomous mobile robots. My thesis was on a navigation system for mobile robots. The navigation system is today the worldwide market leader for Automatically Guided Vehicles. The product name is LazerWay and Kollmorgen produces it.

What I do when I'm not working

Sports
In summertime I like to go running (my first marathon was Stockholm Marathon 2004) and windsurfing. My favourite windsurfing board is an old Starboard 288 Course Slalom. A wonderful board, but very fragile. I have become an expert in using epoxy and fibreglass...

In wintertime I go cross-country skiing. I use to participate in some local competitions and I made Vasaloppet (90 km) in 1994.

Music
I learned to love jazz as a teenager. Listened to The Jazz Hour on Voice of America. At my high school we had a small band where I played the drums for about a year. Around 1990 I took up the drumming again. Now I am a member of the bands Bengt Ek Kvartett, which plays swing music, and Kjell Sandbergs Swingorkester, which plays different kinds of music suitable to be performed in churches. The title of one performance of Kjell Sandbergs Swingorkester is "From Bach to Ellington".