Wolfgang Merkt and research assistants Yiming Yang and Vladimir Ivan are developing a high-performance, high-payload, and high-precision mobile manipulation collaborative robot along with an accompanying AI software platform to target applications such as smart manufacturing. The team is supported by Professor Sethu Vijayakumar as Chief Scientific Advisor.
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.
Christopher McGreavy will be presenting:
- Gaze and the Control of Foot Placement When Walking in Natural Terrain. J.S. Matthis, J.L. Yates, and M.M. Hayhoe (2018).
There is a journal club meeting today at 6pm at the Informatics Forum, rm 4.31/33.
Iris will be presenting:
- Transfer Learning for sEMG Hand Gestures Recognition Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Ulysse Cote-Allard, et al. (2017)
And Ioannis will be presenting:
- Evaluating Theory of Mind in Question Answering, Nematzadeh et. al. (2018)
The Inaugural Lecture of Helen Hastie, Professor of Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University
In the near future, we will see a rapid adoption of robots and autonomous systems in modern society, from self-driving cars to robots in the home and in hazardous and hard-to-reach environments. Trust is an important commodity in this regard because it encourages cooperation with the robot and enables smooth execution of the task at hand, with humans and robots working as part of the same team.
Abstract: Described as ‘ground breaking research’, a current study by Dr Chris Papadopoulos and colleagues at the University of Bedfordshire, are testing and evaluating the impact of robots’ upon care home clients’ health and wellbeing. The Pepper robots designed and marketed by Softbank Robotics are being developed to be culturally aware. Professor Irene Papadopoulos, Professor of Transcultural Health and Nursing has been responsible for developing the culturally aware robots set to assist in caring for older people.
Abstract: There is currently social concern about children’s extensive engagement in digital technologies and the negative impact that it might have on physical activity health, engagement in face-to-face human interaction, and connectedness with nature. My research, however, explores the potential for digital technologies to be used as a means to enhance positive interactions with animals (reduce cruelty and increase compassionate behaviour) and also increase children’s connectedness with nature.
Abstract: From sci-fi we know what we want from surgical robotics; basically, it's simple: super human performance, speed, and precision without trembling, without mistakes ... reaching minimally-invasively deep into the human body, but reacting adequately, gently, and quickly to any unforeseen event, sharing the work space with the legacy human OR staff. And will the surgeon become obsolete anytime soon? Let’s look at the state of the art in robotics, industry robotics, as well as surgical robotics that we do have today.
Abstract: Growing theoretical and experimental research on action and language processing and on number learning and gestures clearly demonstrates the role of embodiment in cognition and language processing. In psychology and neuroscience, this evidence constitutes the basis of embodied cognition, also known as grounded cognition (Pezzulo et al. 2012; Borghi & Cangelosi 2014).