News

Final version of textboook published

Stefano V. Albrecht, Filippos Christianos and Lukas Schäfer have released the final version of their textbook ‘Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: Foundations and Modern Approaches’ which now can be downloaded for free from the website: https://www.marl-book.com

Lecture slides for the book will be released in the first quarter of 2024 and a printed version, published by MIT Press, is scheduled for later in the year.

New Textbook "Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: Foundations and Modern Approaches"

A new textbook to be published by MIT Press, PDF pre-print available now

A new textbook titled "Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: Foundations and Modern Approaches" written by IPAB members Stefano V. Albrecht, Filippos Christianos, and Lukas Schäfer, to be published by MIT Press.

The PDF pre-print version of the book was released at the start of the AAMAS 2023 and ICRA 2023 conferences. The PDF can be downloaded from the book website at www.marl-book.com.

Avatar XPrize Finalists

Dr Vladimir Ivan and Professor Sethu Vijayakumar are members of the AvatarX team lead by Touchlab which recently qualified for the finals of the Avatar XPRIZE.

Fifteen teams from eight countries have been selected by the Avatar XPRIZE judging panel to advance to the final, which is due to be held later in the USA in 2022.

BBC Reporting Scotland broadcast with Professor Sethu Vijayakumar

A team of eight British Sign Language and Tech experts have created 500 words and phrases to help members of the deaf community access education and jobs in Computer Science. BBC Scotland visited the University of Edinburgh Robotic Labs to look at the positive impact this will have on our future generations.

Link to the BBC Scotland interview with Professor Vijayakumar can be found here

Student trip to Firbush

A group of CDT RAS students have just returned from two action packed days at the University of Edinburgh’s Firbush Outdoor Centre near Killin. After packed lunch on arrival at Firbush, the Firbush staff briefed everyone about the site and the activities. In the afternoon students spilt into two groups.  One went kayaking, starting with a trip up the loch, and finishing with kayak games in the harbour. The other group was paddle boarding and went for a trip in the opposite direction, finishing off with some challenges on the paddle boards.

Highlights from our Annual Conference - October 2021

Our 2021 Annual CDT Conference took place on Friday 1st October when we welcomed 70 students, 30 academics and 34 industry partners to our online event.

CDT Director Professor Michael Mistry opened the proceedings by welcoming delegates to the conference and providing an overview of the activities of the CDT in the 2020/21 academic year.

CDT wins Equality Award

In recognition of outstanding work to recruit and support gender diverse students, the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Robotics and Autonomous Systems has won the 2021 Minerva Informatics Equality Award.

The prestigious award recognises excellence in the encouragement to enrol, and retention of, female students in Computer Science and Informatics programmes.                            

CDT Student Kai Yuan receives Rising Star Award

Kai Yuan, PhD student in the 2017 cohort, has received a Rising Star Award from the UK-RAS network. This award was one of four awards made, and it recognises excellence and achievement by the UK robotics and autonomous systems community during the past challenging year. 

Following an open nomination process, the winners were selected by an expert panel from the UK-RAS network's Executive Committee. After receiving their awards, the winners gave an overview presentation to the UK-RAS Robotics Summer Showcase attendees.