news

04-04-07

Interactive Robotics "One Man and his Bot"

New UWE Robotics Lecturer, Dr Matt Studley has led a successful bid for EPSRC funding to develop a new interactive robotics event; "One Man and his Bot". The team also includes Prof Alan Winfield and Dr Karen Bultitude, who are both very experienced at communicating robot science to the public.

"Although we've been taking a swarm robotics demo to science festivals for some years now, we noticed that the schoolkids were confused about what a robot really is. Perhaps from TV's 'Robot Wars' they have the impression that robots are remote controlled vehicles. We realised we needed to change this!"

The grant from the EPSRC PPE Scheme will support building a flock of robot sheep which will autonomously flock together. Members of the public will have the chance to drive a 'sheepdog' to see how many sheep they can herd into a pen within a short time.

"We hope this event will demonstrate that robotics can be fun, that there's a big difference between a robot and a remote controlled vehicle, and let us explain how biological examples are used by roboticists to inspire their work."

The event will be delivered at the Imagineering Fair at the Bath & West Show, as well as the Discover Zone at Cheltenham Science Festival. It is anticipated that further dates and locations will be incorporated in the future.

03-03-07

BRL  Infrastructure upgrade and expansion

Work started at the beginning of March on the $1.5million upgrade and expansion of BRL. The upgrades include 12 new research units, video conferencing, rapid prototyping and workshop facilities. BRL will also be acquiring and developing robot heads and torsos along with 2 and 3D position location infrastructure for its current and new fleets of mobile robots. The construction and re-fitting is expected to take approximately 3 months. Professor Chris Melhuish, Director of BRL, is “excited about the potential to create even more collaborations with other academics institutions and industry”

UK 's largest robot labs to open in Bristol press release

Intelligent and independent robots, designed to cooperate with people and work autonomously, are to be developed at a new robotics facility in Bristol. read more

The Emergence of Artificial Culture in Robot Societies announced here, is a 4-year EPSRC funded project in which the overall aim is to investigate the emergence of culture as a novel property of social animals by building an artificial society of robots: the Artificial Culture lab.  Lead by Alan Winfield, the project is a collaboration between the Bristol Robotics Lab at UWE, Bristol and the universities of Abertay Dundee, Exeter, Leeds Metropolitan, Manchester and Warwick.

Alan Winfield is leading the EPSRC Stage Award Walking with Robots, with co-investigators Prof Noel Sharkey (Sheffield), Prof Owen Holland (Essex) and Prof Frank Burnet (UWE, Science Communication Unit).  The project is coordinated from the Science Communication Unit, and is a 3 year programme of events designed to take the UK's intelligent robots research into schools, science centres and public spaces and, in so doing, raise the level of understanding and debate about the future of intelligent robots in society. See: www.walkingwithrobots.org