Over 630 attendees logged in to watch the full interview between Marc Raibert, Founder and Chairman of Boston Dynamics and Professor Sethu Vijayakumar, and to interactively take part in the live online polls and Q&A session.

Boston Dynamics are leaders in some of the world’s most advanced robots including Spot, Atlas and Handle. The company specialises in robots which can reach inaccessible areas and are able to move more quickly to get the work done faster.

The UK Research  and Innovation (UKRI) has launched six new research projects or, “nodes” aimed at tackling challenges to the development of autonomous systems.  These are part of the Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) programme which will undertake fundamental, creative and multidisciplinary research in various areas key to ensure autonomous systems can be built in a way society can trust and use.

The Edinburgh Centre for Robotics has been awarded funding for two nodes:

Our annual conference took place online this year, and we found it to be just as engaging and diverse as ever.  We were joined on Zoom by four keynote speakers, and about 100 students, staff and industry representatives. 

We kicked off with Keynote speaker Professor Metin Sitti from Max Planck institute who did a talk on soft-bodied small scale robotics that featured memorable robots modelled after baby jellyfish. 

Professor Helen Hastie and Professor Yvan Petillot have been appointed as joint academic leads of the National Robotarium.