NASA

Edinburgh's NASA Robot "Valkyrie" at Robotarium East

The morning of monday 29th February 2016, Valkyrie, NASA's R5 Robot, arrived in the School of Informatics. The Edinburgh Centre for Robotics Valkyrie team, Professor Vijayakumar, Dr Fallon, Dr Vladimir Ivan, and PhD students Wolfgang Merkt, Marco Caravagna, Simona Nobili and Yiming Yang welcomed the NASA crew and set up the lab for the new addition to the Robotarium East. The Valkyrie is not ready for display and demos yet, but further information will be provided soon.

BBC World Service: "The robot designed to replace astronauts"

Earlier today, Prof Sethu Vijayakumar, co-director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, was interviewed by BBC World Service radio about the NASA Valkyrie robot project. He explained why Valkyrie resembles human beings and talked about its use in space exploration, as well as its applications on Earth.

To hear the full interview, please visit: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p038f64b

Useful links

Professor Sethu Vijayakumar's website

EPSRC Humanoid Robotics Sandpit held at the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics

On 3rd and 4th November 2015, researchers from the groups of Nicolas Mansard (LAAS, Toulouse), Jeremy Wyatt (U. of Birmingham) and Matt Howard (Kings College London) visited for two days to discuss avenues for potential collaboration in the area of humanoid control and manipulation. After a presentions from the visiting groups, Edinburgh research staff and PhD students gave a tutorial session demonstrating their humanoid simulation environment, research in whole-body motion planning and locomotion.