Lloyd’s Register Foundation has identified Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) as a key technology that impacts on the Foundation’s core objectives and has therefore commissioned a team led by Professor David Lane , Edinburgh Centre for Robotics Director, to produce a Foresight Report.
Edinburgh Centre for Robotics is pleased to announce that next year’s European Robotics Forum will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, from 22nd to 24th March 2017. The Centre's application to host this event was approved early January this year by EU Robotics.
Edinburgh Centre for Robotics Director, Prof Sethu Vijayakumar, is one of the three judges for the 2016 BBC Robot Wars alongside:
The morning of monday 29th February 2016, Valkyrie, NASA's R5 Robot, arrived in the School of Informatics. The Edinburgh Centre for Robotics Valkyrie team, Professor Vijayakumar, Dr Fallon, Dr Vladimir Ivan, and PhD students Wolfgang Merkt, Marco Caravagna, Simona Nobili and Yiming Yang welcomed the NASA crew and set up the lab for the new addition to the Robotarium East. The Valkyrie is not ready for display and demos yet, but further information will be provided soon.
Last Wednesday 24th February, Professor Sethu Vijayakumar and PhD students, Alexander Enoch (Edinburgh) and Iris Kyranou (Heriot Watt) were live on BBC micro:bit Live Lesson at 11-11.45am . Professor Sethu Vijayakumar gave an insight of the Valkyrie robot that arrived in Edinburgh last Monday 29th February 2016. Alexander Enoch and Iris Kyranou demoed some of the robots that are part of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics Robotarium East, such as the prosthetic hand.
Will robots take over our jobs in the near future? Will the rise of robots lead to a decrease in human cognitive abilities? These are some of the questions the audience asked at the public debate “How Will Robotics Reshape Our Lives in the Next Two Decades”, an event co-organised by the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics and the British Science Association last Thursday 4th February 2016 at the Informatics Forum, University of Edinburgh.
Marian Andrecki, MSc by Research student at Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, was shortlisted for the finals of the Man AHL Coder competition. The top eight entrants have been invited to the Man AHL office in the City of London on 12th February 2016 for the final ‘Code Off’ to establish the winner of the competition and the £5,000 prize. Marian said,
Last Friday 22nd January 2016, Professor Sethu Vijayakumar, Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics and Personal Chair in Robotics in the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, concluded a contract signing with Honda Research Institute Europe, in the Informatics Forum’s Turing Room. This marks the beginning of a fruitful collaboration in the domain of interactive robotics between the Centre and Honda RI, the home of the world famous ASIMO humanoid. Professor Vijayakumar said:
The team at Edinburgh Centre for Robotics was delighted to welcome Professor Michael Beetz to Edinburgh last week. Professor Beetz is a professor for Computer Science at the Faculty for Mathematics & Informatics of the University Bremen and Head of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IAI). IAI investigates AI-based control methods for robotic agents, with a focus on human-scale everyday manipulation tasks.
Professor David Lane, Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics and Professor of Autonomous Systems Engineering in Heriot-Watt’s School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, has been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Engineering in the 2016 New Year's Honours list.