Robot Talk

This week, Claire chatted to Nick Hawes from the University of Oxford all about robot decision-making, long-term autonomy, and artificial intelligence.

Nick Hawes is a Professor of AI and Robotics at the University of Oxford, where he directs the Oxford Robotics Institute (ORI). Within the ORI he leads the Goal-Oriented Autonomous Long-Lived Systems (GOALS) group which researches decision-making for autonomous systems under uncertainty, including robots and human-robot teams. Recent highlights include the deployment of an autonomous mission planning stack on a quadruped at an active nuclear site, and on an autonomous underwater vehicle harvesting data from a sensor network.

Join us for Robot Talk Live Robot Talk will be returning for another live episode recording in June! Claire will be chatting about Robotics and Science Fiction with three very special guests at Imperial College London at 1pm on Sunday 18th June, as part of the Great Exhibition Road Festival and the UK Festival of Robotics.

Find out more: https://www.greatexhibitionroadfestival.co.uk/event/robotics-and-science-fiction/

This week, Claire chatted to Georgia Chalvatzaki from the Technical University of Darmstadt all about mobile assistive robots, learning, and planning.

Check out the trailer for the UK-RAS Network's one-of-a-kind livestream event, Robot Lab Live, returning to YouTube this June: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC8LBdjCtD8.

Join us for Robot Talk Live Robot Talk will be returning for another live episode recording in June! Claire will be chatting about Robotics and Science Fiction with three very special guests at Imperial College London at 1pm on Sunday 18th June, as part of the Great Exhibition Road Festival and the UK Festival of Robotics.

Find out more: https://www.greatexhibitionroadfestival.co.uk/event/robotics-and-science-fiction/

Georgia Chalvatzaki is a Professor of Robot Perception and Learning at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. Before that, she was an Assistant Professor and Independent Research Group Leader since March 2021, after getting the renowned Emmy Noether grant of the German Research Foundation. She completed her Ph.D. in 2019 at the Intelligent Robotics and Automation Lab at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, with her thesis "Human-Centered Modeling for Assistive Robotics: Stochastic Estimation and Robot Learning in Decision-Making."

This week, Claire chatted to Helmut Hauser from the University of Bristol all about soft robotics, sensing, and smart robot bodies.

Check out the video of the swimming trout that Helmut talks about here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtuHgl35TT4&ab_channel=LauderLab

Join us for Robot Talk Live We're thrilled to announce that Robot Talk will be returning for another live episode recording in June! Claire will be chatting about Robotics and Science Fiction with three very special guests at Imperial College London at 1pm on Sunday 18th June, as part of the Great Exhibition Road Festival and the UK Festival of Robotics.

Find out more: https://www.greatexhibitionroadfestival.co.uk/event/robotics-and-science-fiction/

Helmut Hauser is an Associate Professor in Robotics at the University of Bristol and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. He is also the Director of the EPSRC Centre of Doctoral Training for Robotics and Autonomous Systems. Helmut's research is focused on morphological computation and soft robotics. In particular, he is interested in understanding the underlying principles of how biological systems exploit their complex physical bodies to facilitate sensing, controlling and learning, and how these principles can be employed to design better bodies to build better robots.

This week, Claire chatted to Carlotta Berry from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology all about robotics education, science outreach, and increasing participation.

Join us for Robot Talk Live We're thrilled to announce that Robot Talk will be returning for another live episode recording in June! Claire will be chatting about Robotics and Science Fiction with three very special guests at Imperial College London at 1pm on Sunday 18th June, as part of the Great Exhibition Road Festival and the UK Festival of Robotics.

Find out more: https://www.greatexhibitionroadfestival.co.uk/event/robotics-and-science-fiction/

Carlotta Berry has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Spelman College, bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, master's in electrical engineering from Wayne State University, and PhD from Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include robotics education, human-robot interaction, and increasing marginalized and minoritized populations in STEM fields. Berry is a prolific speaker and author of the text, "Mobile Robotics for Multidisciplinary Study" and Black STEM romance novel, "Elevated Inferno: Monet's Moment".

This week, Claire chatted to Francesco Giorgio-Serchi from the University of Edinburgh all about underwater robots, weather-proofing, and soft robotics.

Join us for Robot Talk LiveWe're thrilled to announce that Robot Talk will be returning for another live episode recording in June! Claire will be chatting about Robotics and Science Fiction with three very special guests at Imperial College London at 1pm on Sunday 18th June, as part of the Great Exhibition Road Festival and the UK Festival of Robotics.

Find out more: https://www.greatexhibitionroadfestival.co.uk/event/robotics-and-science-fiction/

Francesco Giorgio-Serchi is a Lecturer and Chancellor's Fellow in Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the University of Edinburgh. His work encompasses the design and control of underwater vehicles for operation in extreme weather conditions. Previously he was a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, within the Fluid-Structure-Interaction group, where he worked on the design of soft-bodied, bioinspired, aquatic vehicles. Dr. Giorgio-Serchi holds an MSc from the University of Pisa, Italy, in Marine Technologies and a PhD in Fluid Dynamics from the University of Leeds.

This week, Claire chatted to Kat Thiel from Manchester Metropolitan University all about collaborative robots, micro-factories, and fashion manufacturing.

Kat Thiel is a Senior Research Associate at Manchester Metropolitan University's Manchester Fashion Institute with a research focus on Fashion Practice Research and Industry 4.0., investigating agile cobotic tooling solutions for localised fashion manufacturing. Previously a researcher at the Royal College of Art, she worked on the Future Fashion Factory report 'Benchmarking the Feasibility of the Micro-Factory Model for the UK Fashion Industry' and co-produced produced the highly influential report 'Reshoring UK Garment Manufacturing with Automation' with Innovate UK KTN.

This week, Claire chatted to Maitreyee Wairagkar from the University of California all about neurotechnology, artificial intelligence, and assistive robotics.

Maitreyee Wairagkar is a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Davis, developing assistive neurotechnology using artificial intelligence to restore lost function in people with neurological disorders. She builds brain-computer interfaces to enable people with severe motor and speech impairments to communicate directly via their brain signals by breaking barriers between humans and technology. Previously, she was at Imperial College London and UK Dementia Research Institute where she developed conversational AI and social robots for dementia support.

This week, Claire chatted to Thom Kirwan-Evans from Origami Labs all about computer vision, machine learning and robots in industry.

Thom Kirwan-Evans is a co-founder at Origami Labs where he applies the latest AI research to solve complex real world problems. Thom started as a physicist at Dstl working with camera systems before moving to an engineering consultancy and then setting up his own company last year. A keen runner and father of two, a key aim in starting his business was a good work-life balance.

This week, Claire chatted to Alessandra Rossi from the University of Naples all about social robotics, theory of mind, and robots playing football.

Alessandra Rossi is Assistant Professor at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy. Her PhD thesis was part of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie ETN SECURE project at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, and she is now a Visiting Lecturer and Researcher there. Her research interests include human-robot interaction, social robotics, explainable AI, multi-agent systems and user profiling. She is the team leader of RoboCup team Bold Hearts at the University of Hertfordshire, and Executive Committee member of the RoboCup Humanoid League.

This week, Claire chatted to Edward Timpson from QinetiQ all about robots in the military, uncrewed vehicles, and cyber security.

Ed Timpson joined QinetiQ in 2020 after 11 years serving in the Royal Navy as a Weapons Engineering Officer (Submarines) across a number of ranks. Joining QinetiQ Target Systems as a Project Engineer and also managing the Hardware team, he had success in developing new capabilities for the Banshee family of UAS. He then moved into future systems within QinetiQ as a Principal Systems Engineer specialising in complex trials and experimentation of uncrewed vehicles. He now heads up the Robotics and Autonomous Systems capability within QinetiQ UK.