Robot Talk

This week, Claire chatted to Ana Cavalcanti from the University of York all about software development, testing and verification, and autonomous mobile robots. This is our last episode before we take a little break for the holiday season. Robot Talk will be back in the New Year on the 6 th January. Ana Cavalcanti is a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies. She is the leader o...

This week, Claire chatted to Sina Sareh from the Royal College of Art all about industrial inspection, soft robotics, and robotic grippers. Sina Sareh is the Academic Leader in Robotics at Royal College of Art. He is currently a Reader (Associate Professor) in Robotics and Design Intelligence at RCA, and a Fellow of EPSRC, whose research develops technological solutions to problems of human safety...

This week, Claire chatted to Amanda Prorok from the University of Cambridge all about self-driving cars, industrial robots, and multi-robot systems. Our t-shirt competition has now ended - congratulations to our five lucky winners! Amanda Prorok is Professor of Collective Intelligence and Robotics in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Pembrok...

This week, Claire talked to Simon Wanstall from the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics all about soft robotics, robotic prostheses and taking inspiration from nature. To celebrate the new season of Robot Talk, we're running a competition to win one of our awesome t-shirts! To enter, either share the latest episode on Twitter and tag @UKRobotics or on LinkedIn and tag the EPSRC UK-RAS Network . Five luc...

This week, Claire chatted to Séverin Lemaignan from PAL Robotics all about social robots, behaviour, and robot-assisted human-human interactions. To celebrate the new season of Robot Talk, we're running a competition to win one of our awesome t-shirts! To enter, either share the latest episode on Twitter and tag @UKRobotics or on LinkedIn and tag the EPSRC UK-RAS Network . Five lucky listeners wil...

This week, Claire chatted to Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena from Imperial College London about medical robotics, robotic surgery, and translational research. To celebrate the new season of Robot Talk, we're running a competition to win one of our awesome t-shirts! To enter, either share the latest episode on Twitter and tag @UKRobotics or on LinkedIn and tag the EPSRC UK-RAS Network . Five lucky lis...

This week, Claire chatted to Gopal Ramchurn from the University of Southampton about artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and renewable energy. To celebrate the new season of Robot Talk, we're running a competition to win one of our awesome t-shirts! To enter, either share the latest episode on Twitter and tag @UKRobotics or on LinkedIn and tag the EPSRC UK-RAS Network . Five lucky listene...

This week, Claire talked to Mickey Li from the University of Bristol about aerial robotics, building inspection and multi-robot teams. To celebrate the new season of Robot Talk, we're running a competition to win one of our awesome t-shirts! To enter, either share the latest episode on Twitter and tag @UKRobotics or on LinkedIn and tag the EPSRC UK-RAS Network . Five lucky listeners will be random...

This week, Claire talked to Dr Iveta Eimontaite from Cranfield University all about psychology, human-robot interaction, and industrial robots. To celebrate the new season of Robot Talk, we're running a competition to win one of our awesome t-shirts! We've expanded and extended the competition and there are now two ways to enter - share the latest episode on Twitter and tag @UKRobotics or on Linke...

This week, Claire chatted to Sean Katagiri from The National Robotarium all about underwater robots, offshore energy, and other industrial applications of robotics. To celebrate the new season of Robot Talk, we're running a competition to win one of our awesome t-shirts! For a chance to win, all you have to do is share the latest episode of Robot Talk on Twitter and tag @UKRobotics . Five lucky li...

This week, Claire talked to Dr Paul Dominick Baniqued from The University of Manchester all about brain-computer interface technology and rehabilitation robotics. To celebrate the new season of Robot Talk, we're running a competition to win one of our awesome t-shirts! For a chance to win, all you have to do is share the latest episode of Robot Talk on Twitter and tag @UKRobotics . Five lucky list...

In the first episode of the new season, Claire chatted to Roopika Ravikanna from the University of Lincoln all about farm robots, fruit-picking and human-robot interaction. To celebrate the new season, we're running a competition to win one of our awesome Robot Talk t-shirts! For a chance to win, all you have to do is share the latest episode of Robot Talk on Twitter and tag @UKRobotics . Five luc...

The first robots went into space over 60 years ago and robotics have become a familiar sight in many industrial settings, but it took a bit longer for robots to make their way into our homes. Robotic vacuum cleaners first started to make an appearance in homes about 20 years ago now, and according to a recent survey by the UK-RAS Network, 28% of people say that robots are now an occasional part of...

In many areas of robotics, scientists and engineers are taking inspiration from nature in their designs. Bioinspired robotics now encompasses a huge number of different research fields and applications that we've discussed before, from sensing to locomotion and from medical to agricultural robotics. This month, I'm chatting to three roboticists who've taken a leaf out of nature's book to develop i...

One of the most dangerous and unpredictable Earth environments we can send robots into are disaster zones – sites devastated by natural disasters or conflict — but here they can play some of their most impactful roles, such as surveying, search and rescue, even detecting land mines or defusing bombs. To find out more about these daring rescue robots, I'll be chatting to two roboticists who've work...

Robots are becoming a more and more important part of our home and work lives and as we come to rely on them, trust is of paramount importance. Successful teams are founded on trust, and the same is true for human-robot teams. But what does it mean to trust a robot? I'll be chatting to three roboticists working on various aspects of trustworthiness in robotics: Dr Anouk van Maris (University of th...

One of the most familiar types of robot are drones – we've seen them replace fireworks at Olympic opening ceremonies and you might have even seen people flying their own. But this is one method of locomotion we haven't yet covered on Robot Talk, so for episode 14 we're taking to the skies to find out more about the challenges and opportunities of aerial robotics. I'll be chatting to two roboticist...

Unlike the characteristics of most robots, the adaptations of living organisms weren't designed - they evolved through natural selection over millions of years. Evolutionary robotics takes inspiration from this process of natural selection to create new robot designs, and allow robots to adapt to their environment over many generations. In the first episode of 2022, I'll be chatting to three robot...

The manufacturing industry's need for accuracy and repeatability in repetitive manual tasks made it an early adopter of robotics technology. Now, as machines become more intelligent and more autonomous, manufacturing robots are taking on more challenging tasks and working more closely with humans. In this episode, I'll be chatting to three roboticists researching and working in manufacturing and a...

In the last decade, autonomous cars have gone from being SciFi fantasy to a commercial reality on our roads, and as with most major technological developments, self-driving cars have been met with a mixture of excitement and fear. Autonomous vehicles have the potential to improve safety on the roads and take over time-consuming and difficult tasks off road, but researchers must be able to demonstr...

Welcome to a brand-new season of Robot Talk, hosted by Dr Claire Asher! In season 1 we talked about many different types of robot, working alone or directly with humans. One thing we didn't get to touch upon very much is when robots work together with other robots, for example, as part of a swarm. In the first episode of the new season, Claire chats to two roboticists working on swarm robotics: Me...

We often hear about robots working in controlled, predictable environments, like an assembly line or an operating theatre, but as a former field biologist, Claire is most interested in what happens when we take robots outside into wild environments, where everything — from the elements to the local wildlife — seems to be against you. In this special live recording for the UK Festival of Robotics,...

Throughout the series so far, soft robotics has come up over and over in different areas, from medicine to agriculture. In this episode, I'll be chatting to three roboticists working on different applications of this fascinating and fast-developing area of robotics: Dr Thomas Thuruthel (University of Cambridge), Angus Clark (Imperial College London) and Dr Jelizaveta Konstantinova (Ocado Technolog...

Although as consumers we may sometimes feel quite detached from food production, agriculture is central to all our lives. As an industry, agriculture has often been at the forefront of technological development, and today researchers are developing robots that can lighten the load at virtually every stage of the growing process. In this episode, I'll be striding into the muddy world of agricultura...

Although robots have been in our lives for decades, they have often been kept quite separate from the humans they help, whether that's huge industrial manufacturing robots that operate behind fences on the factory floor or remote handling robots in nuclear and surgical settings. But increasingly, we want to design robots that work with us in close collaboration. In this episode, I take a look at t...