News

International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Montreal, Canada

RAS CDT student, Christian Rauch attended the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Montreal, Canada from 20th -24th May.

ICRA is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s flagship conference, attracting 4145 participants from 71 different countries.

Christian presented his recent work on articulated tracking and took the opportunity to discuss his research with others working in the same area.

Prof. David Lane appointed to AI Council

Prof. David Lane joins leaders in business and data privacy organisations, as well as from academia, in his new role on the UK Government’s AI Council.

This is an important time in the evolution and application of this most disruptive and groundbreaking of technologies.

Prof. David Lane

The newly appointed members will help put in place the right skills, ethics and data so the UK can make the most of AI technologies.

Student wins prestigious RSE scholarship

RAS CDT student Derek Chun has been awarded the John Moyes Lessells Travel Scholarship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh to carry out research in Japan with Prof. Koh Hosoda of Hosoda Lab, Osaka University. This is an amazing achievement as the scholarship is open to all branches of engineering in Scotland and Derek has suceeded in making his application stand out from all others.

Centre collaborates in ground breaking study to test new therapies for Parkinson's disease

A ground-breaking study is to test new therapies for Parkinson’s disease on robots – replacing the need for animal testing. Over the next year, academics from Heriot-Watt University and the International Institute of Neuroscience in Brazil will join forces on the pioneering study: Neurorobotics Model of Parkinson’s disease. Currently, scientists use rats in experiments to find new treatments but in this study, data already recorded from other animals in Brazil and robots in UK will be used instead.

RAS CDT to host third student CDT conference

The RAS CDT is delighted to be hosting the third student annual conference held jointly with the Robotics CDTs in Bristol (FARSCOPE), Edinburgh (RAS) and Oxford (AIMS). The conference will take place at Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt Universities on Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th June.  More information about the conference can be found here https://www.edinburgh-robotics.org/cdt-student-conference-3rd-4th-june-2019

Centre Academics named as Ones to Watch 2019

Professor Verena Rieser and Professor Oliver Lemon have been named as People to Watch in 2019 in the Digital List in FutureScot, a journal that reports on the digital technology sector in Scotland. The article recognises the team’s research work in the area of AI, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing and acknowledges that this has enabled Heriot-Watt University to be a top three finalist in the Amazon Alexa Challenge for two years in a row.