Our annual conference took place on Tuesday 9th October at the John MacIntyre Hall at the University of Edinburgh. It was attended by over 100 students, academics and industry partners.
Following the success of the first European Robotics League local tournament of the Service Robots (ERL-SR) competition, which was held in January 2018, the Edinburgh Center for Robotics will host its second ERL-SR local tournament, from the 3rd to the 7th of December 2018.
Our social robot Pepper joined and played dominoes at the Dean social club in the LifeCare Centre, Stockbridge. The social club welcomes its elderly members for three half days every week, all of which are packed with social activities, like music, Tai-chi, Dominoes or Scrabble. The mission of the centre is to help Edinburgh’s lonely and isolated over-60’s by providing companionship that is integrated with local communities.
Five of the Centre’s students are currently undertaking internships with organisations at the forefront of AI and machine learning technology.
Andrew Brock is interning at DeepMind, where he is engaged in cutting-edge scientific research involving technologies.
Tatiana López-Guevara is about to begin a four month long internship with Google Zurich.
Boris Mocialov is working with Adobe on a system that will predict project development success at early stages using machine learning.
Dr Patricia Vargas has contributed to an article that has appeared in Refinery29 magazine entitled 'Why There's A Shocking Lack Of Women Working In Science, Tech, Engineering & Maths.' Her experience differed from many other young girls who were actively encouraged to become involved in STEM subjects when she was told that her passion for STEM and robotics as a 'man's career'. However, Dr. Vargas was clear that if someone tells her she can’t do something she wants to do it more! Dr.
Congratulations to RAS CDT student Èric Pairet Artau who won 1st place in the @cdt_plural Twitter competition. Cdt_plural is the EPSRC CDT PIADS & EPSRC/MRC OPTIMA CDT led photography competition and Èric's image, "Those existential questions: to be, or not to be", came 1st in the #cdtfunny category. Eric won a £25 @AmazonUK voucher, @Seagate hard drive, @BIGchats membership AND a framed print!
Heriot-Watt University and the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics was represented in the Future Combat Systems Expo 2018, that took place on the 3rd of July and organized by BAE Systems. This forum was an opportunity for us to present our research and engage with industry to identify the most pressing needs in the area of underwater systems.
Heriot-Watt has been recognised with one of the country’s top marketing honours for its Year of Robotics campaign.
To encourage innovation from research underway in the Centre, the CDT has allocated some modest resources to support current RAS CDT students in the preparation of prototype hardware and/or software that could lead to a commercial idea.
Two groups of students are already benefiting from funding from the first round of calls at the start of 2018 with exciting projects progressing well.
Watt Ventures: Bright Ideas is a business pitching competition run by the Enterprise Team at Heriot-Watt University that gives students with early-stage business ideas the chance to win up to £500. To be considered for this award, students are asked to submit a two-minute video of them pitching their business idea.
We are delighted to report that our CDT students Siobhan Duncan and Boris Mocialov, and affiliated student Ingo Keller have been awarded 3rd prize at the Watt Ventures Awards for their pitch for their business idea EduBot – Robotics Education for Kids.