University of Plymouth
Faculty of Technology Research Seminar
Seminar on Future Robotics
Friday 19 May 2006 at 2pm - 3.30pm
Portland Square, Stonehouse lecture theatre
(Building 26 on the map:
http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/files/extranet/docs/WEB/Plymouth%20campus.pdf)
Prof. Chris Melhuish (University of the West of England, Bristol).
Robotics at Bristol Robotics Laboratory
There is a growing and unstoppable requirement for embodied software and
hybrid systems to carry out tasks with greater degrees of autonomy. At
present, only 15% of potential applications are automated by industries
and the systems and artefacts they produce. Future autonomous systems
will not simply be an extrapolation of current complex, costly (and
often primitive) technology but will require new design principles.
Physical autonomous systems will be more than C19th engineering with
C21st electronics and software; they will be transformed by smart
materials which will conflate sensing, processing and actuation. Such
materials may also encourage the applications of bio-inspired and
biomimetic principles. The talk describes some of the exciting and novel
work conducted at BRL: from collective robotics to robotics with
hardware neuro-controllers to robots that eat flies for their energy.
Prof. Melhuish is the director of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory
(http://www.brl.ac.uk).
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