Saturday, 30th of July
Keynote Speaker: Matt Whelan, Head of Engineering, Ocado Technology – 10:00 EDT (15:00 BST, 23:00 JST)
Matt will be discussing the engineering challenges behind Ocado’s 600 Series Bot – the world’s lightest and most efficient grocery fulfilment bot. Born at the forefront of additive manufacturing, the team applied additive-first design principles and topology optimisation to make the bot lightweight, more energy efficient and more cost effective. This bot is a critical enabler for a new generation of highly automated warehouses.
Keynote Speaker: Marc Hanheide, Lincooln Centre for Autonomous Systems – 14:00 EDT (19:00 BST, 03:00 JST)
“Pepper the robot tells MPs about artificial intelligence”, “Workers at risk as robots set to replace 66m jobs”, “Robots in workplace ‘could create double the jobs they destroy’” are only some of the most recent news headlines produced on the “rise of the robots”. The (hi)story of robotics research is peppered with overenthusiastic tales, unfounded promises, and dooms talk. In this lecture, Prof Marc Hanheide will offer an overview of research and developments around deploying “mobile robots into the wild”, out of research labs into the real world of farming, museum, warehouses, industrial settings and care homes. He will offer a glimpse into the latest innovations at Lincoln’s Centre for Autonomous Systems (L-CAS) and discuss the challenges and opportunities of robotics in various applications, ranging from harvesting crops to caring for the elderly.
Relevant Links: Our research centre: http://lcas.lincoln.ac.uk/wp/ (and its Twitter: https://twitter.com/lcas_uol)
Sunday, 31st of July
Keynote Speaker: Dr Matteo Russo – Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre (UTC) in Manufacturing and On-Wing Technology – 10:00 EDT (15:00 BST, 23:00 JST)
Delivering tools for invasive operations in cramped spaces with tortuous and narrow passages is a key challenge in many applications, such as surgery and aerospace maintenance. Such critical operations require dexterity and accuracy despite the significant constraints and are currently performed manually in both medical and industrial settings, despite the risks associated to a limited mobility and a reduced perception of the environment.
With over a decade of work in the field, we design our snake-like continuum robots to enable teleoperation or automation in these tasks. Thanks to their technological maturity, our robots have been first demonstrated in on-site aeroengine repair with machining, laser, and flame operations, and then picked up by other industries, including nuclear, telecommunications, and oil&gas, and also by surgeons for medical applications.
With a length of up to 5m and a body diameter of less than 10mm, our robot design is easily adapted to a wide variety of tasks. Our first snake-like robots employed medical tools in industrial applications because of their miniaturised designs; we are now closing the loop by adapting our industrial solutions to human interventions, such as throat surgery. In this talk, we will present our design with past applications and discuss the future of this technology.
Keynote: Dr Ruth Aylett of the National Robotarium, Social Agents and Human Robot Interaction – 14:00 EDT (19:00 BST, 03:00 JST)
Professor Ruth Aylett from the National Robotarium is a Professor of Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. She researches Affective Systems, Social Agents in both graphical and robotic embodiments, and Human-Robot Interaction, as well as Interactive Narrative. She led three EU projects (VICTEC, eCIRCUS and eCUTE) in the period 2001-2012 applying empathic graphical characters to education against bullying (FearNot!) and in cultural sensitivity (ORIENT, Traveller, MIXER). She also worked as a PI in the projects LIREC (investigating long-lived robot companions) and EMOTE (an empathic robot tutor).
She led the EPSRC-funded network of excellence in interactive narrative, RIDERS. She has just completed (as PI) the project SoCoRo (Socially Competent Robots) which is investigating the use of a mobile robot to train high-functioning adults with an Autism Spectrum Disorder in social interaction. Her current project as PI, AMPER, investigates the use of a story-telling agent to support reminiscence therapy with elders suffering from dementia. ***
She has authored more than 250 referred publications in conferences, journals and book chapters, and recently co-wrote the popular science book ‘Living with Robots: What Every Anxious Human Needs to Know’ with the National Robotarium’s Professor Patricia Vargas.
r/Robotics Showcase 