News

International contest reveals assisted living robots of the future

Submitted by ls234 on Thu, 01/02/2018 - 12:00

Europe’s most advanced assisted living robots were showcased in an international tournament at Heriot-Watt University, this week.

Academic teams from across the continent battled it out in the European Robotics League Service Robot Challenge (ERL), testing robots which aim to assist older people in a care setting.

The competition took place in the University’s custom built 60 square metre real life living laboratory, with researchers testing robots which could revolutionise the healthcare and social care sectors. 

Prof Sethu Vijayakumar on BBC Radio Scotland - Brainwaves

Submitted by Zoe McGonigle on Mon, 15/01/2018 - 11:22

On January 17th an interview with Prof Sethu Vijayakumar will air as part of BBC Radio Scotland's Brainwaves series.  

It will be boadcast at 13:30 on Janurary 17th and again on Sunday the 21st at 06:00, with ability to replay on their website by following the link here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09m17xr

"What role will robots play in our lives in the future? We already interact with robots on a daily basis but with the development of intelligent, free-thinking robots our relationship with them will change.

Centre wins £36M grant for research into robotics in offshore energy sector

Submitted by Anne Murphy on Mon, 04/12/2017 - 08:54

ORCA Hub (Offshore Robotics for Certification of Assets) is a £36M programme aimed at addressing the offshore energy industry vision for a completely autonomous offshore energy field. The Hub brings together internationally leading experts from five UK universities with over thirty industry partners led by the Edinburgh Centre of Robotics in collaboration with Imperial College, Oxford and Liverpool Universities.

IET ENGFEST

Submitted by Colette Bush on Thu, 30/11/2017 - 10:45

Three of our RAS CDT students exhibited some of our robots at the IET headquarters in London as part of the Festival of Engineering in October. Siobhan Duncan has written about the experience:

 

Vibhav Bharti, James Horn and I travelled to the Institute of Engineering and Technology’s headquarters in London to represent the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics at their recent Festival of Engineering.

Year of Robotics Parliamentary Reception 

Submitted by Colette Bush on Fri, 10/11/2017 - 16:21

Academics and students from the Centre along with guests from industry attended a reception hosted by Gordon MacDonald, MSP for Edinburgh Pentlands, at the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday 8th November to celebrate Heriot-Watt’s ‘Year of Robotics’.
Professor Oliver Lemon, Director of the Interaction Lab at Heriot-Watt University, outlined how the Centre’s research is contributing towards the UK’s drive to realise its industrial potential in the rapidly evolving robotic sector. He also shared the University’s success in the Amazon Alexa Challenge to date. 

Professor Sethu Vijayakumar keynote at IGD Leaders Forum

Submitted by Colette Bush on Fri, 13/10/2017 - 13:45

Professor Sethu Vijayakumar will be a keynote speaker at the IGD Leaders Forum on 18th October in London. The topic for discussion will be Artificial Intelligence in the food industry and will comprise of the following:

Automation is accelerating in food and grocery. Will this promote productivity and prosperity or will it feed the fires of discontent and rebellion?

- Is AI about to transform the business world?

- Is it any different to previous waves of technology?

- What ethical challenges will it present?

Welcome to three new Centre academics

Submitted by Colette Bush on Fri, 13/10/2017 - 13:23

We are delighted to announce the arrival of three new academics to our fast-growing centre. We would like to welcome Dr Lynne Baillie, Dr Hakan Bilen and Dr Thusha Rajendran and all of the experience and expertise they will bring to the Centre.

Dr Lynne Baillie

Lynne is based in the department of MACS at Heriot-Watt University. Her reseach interests are Health and Rehabilitation Technologies & Robotics, Mobile Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human Robotic Interaction (HRI).

Welcome to Dr. Stefano Albrecht

Submitted by Zoe McGonigle on Wed, 11/10/2017 - 16:47

We would like to welcome Dr. Stefano Albrecht as a supervisor for the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics! He is the new Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence in the School of Informatics at The University of Edinburgh. His main research interests are in the areas of autonomous agents, multi-agent systems, machine learning, and game theory, with a focus on sequential decision making under uncertainty.

Welcome to Dr Ioannis Konstas

Submitted by Anne Murphy on Tue, 26/09/2017 - 15:22

Ioannis Konstas recently joined as an assistant professor at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh. His main research interest focuses on the area of Natural Language Processing and Natural Language Generation (NLG) with an emphasis on data-driven deep learning methods. 

Before that he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington, Seattle, collaborating with Prof. Luke Zettlemoyer (2015-2017).