National Centre for Nuclear Robotics (NCNR)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Birmingham
Department Name: Metallurgy and Materials
Abstract
Nuclear facilities require a wide variety of robotics capabilities, engendering a variety of extreme RAI challenges. NCNR brings together a diverse consortium of experts in robotics, AI, sensors, radiation and resilient embedded systems, to address these complex problems.
In high gamma environments, human entries are not possible at all. In alpha-contaminated environments, air-fed suited human entries are possible, but engender significant secondary waste (contaminated suits), and reduced worker capability. We have a duty to eliminate the need for humans to enter such hazardous environments wherever technologically possible.
Hence, nuclear robots will typically be remote from human controllers, creating significant opportunities for advanced telepresence. However, limited bandwidth and situational awareness demand increased intelligence and autonomous control capabilities on the robot, especially for performing complex manipulations. Shared control, where both human and AI collaboratively control the robot, will be critical because i) safety-critical environments demand a human in the loop, however ii) complex remote actions are too difficult for a human to perform reliably and efficiently.
Before decommissioning can begin, and while it is progressing, characterization is needed. This can include 3D modelling of scenes, detection and recognition of objects and materials, as well as detection of contaminants, measurement of types and levels of radiation, and other sensing modalities such as thermal imaging. This will necessitate novel sensor design, advanced algorithms for robotic perception, and new kinds of robots to deploy sensors into hard-to-reach locations.
To carry out remote interventions, both situational awareness for the remote human operator, and also guidance of autonomous/semi-autonomous robotic actions, will need to be informed by real-time multi-modal vision and sensing, including: real-time 3D modelling and semantic understanding of objects and scenes; active vision in dynamic scenes and vision-guided navigation and manipulation.
The nuclear industry is high consequence, safety critical and conservative. It is therefore critically important to rigorously evaluate how well human operators can control remote technology to safely and efficiently perform the tasks that industry requires.
All NCNR research will be driven by a set of industry-defined use-cases, WP1. Each use-case is linked to industry-defined testing environments and acceptance criteria for performance evaluation in WP11. WP2-9 deliver a variety of fundamental RAI research, including radiation resilient hardware, novel design of both robotics and radiation sensors, advanced vision and perception algorithms, mobility and navigation, grasping and manipulation, multi-modal telepresence and shared control.
The project is based on modular design principles. WP10 develops standards for modularisation and module interfaces, which will be met by a diverse range of robotics, sensing and AI modules delivered by WPs2-9. WP10 will then integrate multiple modules onto a set of pre-commercial robot platforms, which will then be evaluated according to end-user acceptance criteria in WP11.
WP12 is devoted to technology transfer, in collaboration with numerous industry partners and the Shield Investment Fund who specialise in venture capital investment in RAI technologies, taking novel ideas through to fully fledged commercial deployments. Shield have ring-fenced £10million capital to run alongside all NCNR Hub research, to fund spin-out companies and industrialisation of Hub IP.
We have rich international involvement, including NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and Carnegie Melon National Robotics Engineering Center as collaborators in USA, and collaboration from Japan Atomic Energy Agency to help us carry out test-deployments of NCNR robots in the unique Fukushima mock-up testing facilities at the Naraha Remote Technology Development Center.
In high gamma environments, human entries are not possible at all. In alpha-contaminated environments, air-fed suited human entries are possible, but engender significant secondary waste (contaminated suits), and reduced worker capability. We have a duty to eliminate the need for humans to enter such hazardous environments wherever technologically possible.
Hence, nuclear robots will typically be remote from human controllers, creating significant opportunities for advanced telepresence. However, limited bandwidth and situational awareness demand increased intelligence and autonomous control capabilities on the robot, especially for performing complex manipulations. Shared control, where both human and AI collaboratively control the robot, will be critical because i) safety-critical environments demand a human in the loop, however ii) complex remote actions are too difficult for a human to perform reliably and efficiently.
Before decommissioning can begin, and while it is progressing, characterization is needed. This can include 3D modelling of scenes, detection and recognition of objects and materials, as well as detection of contaminants, measurement of types and levels of radiation, and other sensing modalities such as thermal imaging. This will necessitate novel sensor design, advanced algorithms for robotic perception, and new kinds of robots to deploy sensors into hard-to-reach locations.
To carry out remote interventions, both situational awareness for the remote human operator, and also guidance of autonomous/semi-autonomous robotic actions, will need to be informed by real-time multi-modal vision and sensing, including: real-time 3D modelling and semantic understanding of objects and scenes; active vision in dynamic scenes and vision-guided navigation and manipulation.
The nuclear industry is high consequence, safety critical and conservative. It is therefore critically important to rigorously evaluate how well human operators can control remote technology to safely and efficiently perform the tasks that industry requires.
All NCNR research will be driven by a set of industry-defined use-cases, WP1. Each use-case is linked to industry-defined testing environments and acceptance criteria for performance evaluation in WP11. WP2-9 deliver a variety of fundamental RAI research, including radiation resilient hardware, novel design of both robotics and radiation sensors, advanced vision and perception algorithms, mobility and navigation, grasping and manipulation, multi-modal telepresence and shared control.
The project is based on modular design principles. WP10 develops standards for modularisation and module interfaces, which will be met by a diverse range of robotics, sensing and AI modules delivered by WPs2-9. WP10 will then integrate multiple modules onto a set of pre-commercial robot platforms, which will then be evaluated according to end-user acceptance criteria in WP11.
WP12 is devoted to technology transfer, in collaboration with numerous industry partners and the Shield Investment Fund who specialise in venture capital investment in RAI technologies, taking novel ideas through to fully fledged commercial deployments. Shield have ring-fenced £10million capital to run alongside all NCNR Hub research, to fund spin-out companies and industrialisation of Hub IP.
We have rich international involvement, including NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and Carnegie Melon National Robotics Engineering Center as collaborators in USA, and collaboration from Japan Atomic Energy Agency to help us carry out test-deployments of NCNR robots in the unique Fukushima mock-up testing facilities at the Naraha Remote Technology Development Center.
Planned Impact
The NCNR RAI Hub is uniquely equipped and resourced to achieve impactful engagement with the entire value chain. This is because the NCNR Pathways to Impact strategy has been co-created in partnership with key representatives of the entire value chain. NCNR has cemented key partnerships to ensure we deliver:
1) Education and career development of a large new nuclear robotics work-force.
2) Fundamental academic research which comprehensively spans the huge diversity of RAI technologies and related supporting technologies (sensors, resilient chips etc.) that are needed to meet the nuclear challenge.
3) Hand-in-hand partnership with nuclear end-users from the Hub's conception through to delivery - end-users specify the use-cases that drive all Hub research, and specify acceptance criteria used for evaluation.
4) Embedding research outputs directly into major industrial partners, both nuclear and robotics companies, large corporations and cutting-edge SMEs, via long-term embedding and secondments of our researchers.
5) £10million specialist RAI venture capital already committed, with specialist RAI investment and commercialisation experts forming full collaborating project participants from day 1, aimed at converting Hub research outputs into new spin-out companies and achieving commercial technology licensing to end-users.
6) Active participation of the national nuclear agencies of several countries, spanning three continents, to enable real deployments of Hub RAI technologies onto nuclear sites both nationally and internationally.
7) Outreach and public communication of science to engage the wider community with the Hub's contributions.
Our Work Plan supports industrial impact through successful transfer of technology out from the Hub and into partner organisations, including: new Hub spin-out companies; major nuclear end-user companies; large robotics companies and our network of cutting edge UK and European robotics SMEs; other extreme environment domains, e.g. bomb-disposal or firefighting robots; and manufacturing industry.
To ensure end-user exploitation, we will embed many of our PDRF and PhD researchers inside nuclear and robotics companies, and send others for extended collaborative research visits at the nuclear agencies of UK, France, Japan and South Korea. We will also collaborate with UK company partners on InnovateUK projects.
Additional specific pathways to industrialisation include:
1) Director Stolkin and Co-Director Scott are themselves directly embedded inside the nuclear industry (NNL Ltd, and AWE respectively) by Royal Society and RAEng fellowships respectively. This places them in a unique position, relative to any other academics in the country, to inject Hub research into building RAI capabilities in the UK nuclear industry. It also gives unique access to industry advice to help steer our Hub research towards industrial applications.
2) Project partner Shield Investment Management specialises in investing in robotics and AI, particularly in under-roboticised industries (of which nuclear is a prime example). Shield has committed £10million venture capital to NCNR, as well as expertise in taking RAI from conception through to industrialisation.
3) BRL (Melhuish, Pipe) have created the UK's first robotics incubator at the BRL site which has fostered numerous robotics start-up companies.
We will actively engage with the ongoing InnovateUK Demonstrator, Innovation and Nuclear SBRI Programmes. NCNR partners are already involved in four of the eight SBRI Integrated Nuclear Decommissioning projects which received Phase 1 awards. We will seek translation of NCNR technologies into the InnovateUK Innovation and Demonstrator ISCF Programmes, and we will collaborate with industry partners and investors to submit proposals to the regular 6-monthly InnovateUK calls.
1) Education and career development of a large new nuclear robotics work-force.
2) Fundamental academic research which comprehensively spans the huge diversity of RAI technologies and related supporting technologies (sensors, resilient chips etc.) that are needed to meet the nuclear challenge.
3) Hand-in-hand partnership with nuclear end-users from the Hub's conception through to delivery - end-users specify the use-cases that drive all Hub research, and specify acceptance criteria used for evaluation.
4) Embedding research outputs directly into major industrial partners, both nuclear and robotics companies, large corporations and cutting-edge SMEs, via long-term embedding and secondments of our researchers.
5) £10million specialist RAI venture capital already committed, with specialist RAI investment and commercialisation experts forming full collaborating project participants from day 1, aimed at converting Hub research outputs into new spin-out companies and achieving commercial technology licensing to end-users.
6) Active participation of the national nuclear agencies of several countries, spanning three continents, to enable real deployments of Hub RAI technologies onto nuclear sites both nationally and internationally.
7) Outreach and public communication of science to engage the wider community with the Hub's contributions.
Our Work Plan supports industrial impact through successful transfer of technology out from the Hub and into partner organisations, including: new Hub spin-out companies; major nuclear end-user companies; large robotics companies and our network of cutting edge UK and European robotics SMEs; other extreme environment domains, e.g. bomb-disposal or firefighting robots; and manufacturing industry.
To ensure end-user exploitation, we will embed many of our PDRF and PhD researchers inside nuclear and robotics companies, and send others for extended collaborative research visits at the nuclear agencies of UK, France, Japan and South Korea. We will also collaborate with UK company partners on InnovateUK projects.
Additional specific pathways to industrialisation include:
1) Director Stolkin and Co-Director Scott are themselves directly embedded inside the nuclear industry (NNL Ltd, and AWE respectively) by Royal Society and RAEng fellowships respectively. This places them in a unique position, relative to any other academics in the country, to inject Hub research into building RAI capabilities in the UK nuclear industry. It also gives unique access to industry advice to help steer our Hub research towards industrial applications.
2) Project partner Shield Investment Management specialises in investing in robotics and AI, particularly in under-roboticised industries (of which nuclear is a prime example). Shield has committed £10million venture capital to NCNR, as well as expertise in taking RAI from conception through to industrialisation.
3) BRL (Melhuish, Pipe) have created the UK's first robotics incubator at the BRL site which has fostered numerous robotics start-up companies.
We will actively engage with the ongoing InnovateUK Demonstrator, Innovation and Nuclear SBRI Programmes. NCNR partners are already involved in four of the eight SBRI Integrated Nuclear Decommissioning projects which received Phase 1 awards. We will seek translation of NCNR technologies into the InnovateUK Innovation and Demonstrator ISCF Programmes, and we will collaborate with industry partners and investors to submit proposals to the regular 6-monthly InnovateUK calls.
Organisations
- University of Birmingham (Lead Research Organisation)
- Royal Institution of Great Britain (Collaboration, Project Partner)
- Cavendish Nuclear (Collaboration)
- National Nuclear Laboratory (Collaboration, Project Partner)
- Jacobs Engineering Group (Collaboration)
- Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) (Collaboration)
- Australian Centre for Robotic Vision (Collaboration)
- Babcock International Group (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX (Collaboration)
- University of Bristol (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN (Collaboration)
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD (Collaboration)
- Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute (Collaboration)
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Collaboration)
- University of the West of England (Collaboration)
- Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (Collaboration, Project Partner)
- Atomic Weapons Establishment (Collaboration)
- SELLAFIELD LTD (Collaboration)
- Haption (France) (Project Partner)
- UltraSoC Technologies Ltd (Project Partner)
- Nuvia (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Atomic Weapons Establishment (Project Partner)
- Rolls-Royce (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Eidos Education (Project Partner)
- EDF Energy (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Thales (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- KUKA (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Atkins (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (Project Partner)
- National Oceanography Centre (Project Partner)
- Japan Atomic Energy Agency (Project Partner)
- Shield Therapeutics (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Synthotech (Project Partner)
- Toshiba (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Shadow Robot (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Rovtech Solutions (Project Partner)
- Imitec Ltd (Project Partner)
- Sellafield (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Forth Engineering Ltd (Project Partner)
- James Fisher Nuclear Limited (Project Partner)
- IHI Corporation (Japan) (Project Partner)
- National Physical Laboratory (Project Partner)
- Jet Propulsion Lab (Project Partner)
- Ionix Advanced Technologies (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Jacobs UK Limited (Project Partner)
- Atlas Elektronik (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Tohoku University (Project Partner)
- BAE Systems (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
Publications
Martin PG
(2018)
Development and validation of a high-resolution mapping platform to aid in the public awareness of radiological hazards.
in Journal of radiological protection : official journal of the Society for Radiological Protection
Marturi M
(2018)
Dynamic grasp and trajectory planning for moving objects
in Autonomous Robots
Mavrakis N
(2020)
Estimation and exploitation of objects' inertial parameters in robotic grasping and manipulation: A survey
in Robotics and Autonomous Systems
Mavrakis N
(2020)
Estimation and exploitation of objects ' inertial parameters in robotic grasping and manipulation: A survey
in Robotics and Autonomous Systems
Maximilian Huettenrauch
(2019)
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Swarm Systems
in Journal of Machine Learning Research
Maximilian Hüttenrauch
(2018)
Local Communication Protocols for Learning Complex Swarm Behaviors with Deep Reinforcement Learning
Mcdonald-Maier K
(2020)
New approaches to DVFS in mobile MPSoC for power-, thermal-efficiency and reliability
Mcdonald-Maier K
(2021)
FoodSQRBlock: Digitizing food production & supply chain with blockchain & QR code in the cloud
Mcdonald-Maier K
(2021)
FoodSQRBlock: Digitizing food production & supply chain with blockchain & QR code in the cloud
| Description | By end of the funding programme, spring 2022, the National Centre has published more than 400 peer reviewed papers. As of early 2021, the National Centre has published 300 peer reviewed papers, on novel robotics and Ai advances, over a period of three years We have also fulfilled our promise to deliver technology-transfer from day 1 of the project. Within the first 6 months, NCNR members have been active in at least 6 parallel InnovateUK projects. Additional advanced robotic manipulation methods have been implemented by the Birmingham team on the Sorting and Segregation robot testrig at the NNL Workington nuclear industry site. We have also engaged in significant commercialisation work via our various associated spinout companies. This includes further development of advanced autonomous robotic manipulation capabilities at TRL7 inside live radioactive environments (NNL Preston - vision/AI-guided robotic Laser cutting by Stolkin's team), radiation surveys by Scott's team, and InnovateUK-funded feasibility studies involving several spinouts and SMEs. Most partners have made substantial progress in setting up robotic testrigs at their sites (e.g. manipulator setups at Birmingham, Lincoln, Lancaster, BRL, Edinburgh). Initial work is underway to build mockup nuclear environments for test-deployments of robots at several sites. U Bristol (Scott) has been developing unique mock-up robot testing environments which contain live radioactive sources. Essex have been reviewing several collaborator sites (NASA, RAL-ISIS, NPL) which offer radiation facilities, to plan radiation-resilience testing of electronics, sensors, chips and embedded systems which will develop as the project progresses. A large amount of public engagement activity has taken place. We presented NCNR at the Innovation2017 conference where the new RAI hubs were first publicly announced. We have also presented our work to the IEEE Technical Committee on Robotics and Automation for Nuclear Facilities. We presented at the conference held at British Antarctic Survey in December 2017, and at the UK RAS conference organised by partner BRL in December 2017, and at the UK RAS conference organised by partner QMUL in early 2018. We have (Stolkin, Neumann) competitively won and led a workshop at European Robotics Forum (ERF) March 2018, dedicated to nuclear applications of robotics. As well as presenting NCNR, we have invited the Manchester-led RAIN nuclear robotics hub to also present at this ERF workshop. PI Stolkin was also invited to speak at the Innovation workshop at ERF2018, led by European Commission - NCNR was presented and received a lot of attention from senior H2020 robotics funding officers of the European Commission - further engagement has been requested by the Commission officers. We have also developed clear plans for educational outreach to promote nuclear robotics as an engaging theme for STEM education. The Royal Institution is coordinating national outreach efforts of NCNR. Non-profit education SME Eidos Education is consulting to coordinate hub members to create new educational materials, and promote international dissemination. In months 7-9, we have continued the rapid growth and large activity seen in the previous 6 months. A large number of new peer-reviewed publications have been generated by the consortium. Additional industrial impact has been demonstrated. Examples include UAV aerial survey of a uranium ore mine; collaboration with SMEs, nuclear industry, and InnovateUK to further develop robotic laser-cutting capabilities, including showing how novel radiation sensors can be used to selectively cut out highly contaminated material. New vision-guided robot control software is now being licensed to the nuclear industry by Stolkin's team. The National Centre has also been presented to House of Commons MP Thangam Debbonaire - Industrial Parliamentary Fellow for the energy industry. The National Centre has also been presented at a meeting of the Royal Society with very positive feedback. Eidos Education have collaborated with Royal Institution to create a questionnaire which is being used to map the large variety of educational outreach activity that exists across the National Centre universities. This will then be used to coordinate outreach efforts nationally and internationally. Two new universities (Plymouth and Southampton) have been added to the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics consortium, via our Flexible Partnership Fund, and we are developing plans with them for nuclear submarine decommissioning, and underwater radiation sensing respectively. By month 11, the consortium reports 60 peer reviewed papers published, and additional successes with innovation and knowledge transfer. Highlights include a novel autonomous grasping algorithm, which does not rely on either object models or on learning. This has attracted a lot of attention from National Nuclwar Lab Ltd, and is now being implemented on their industrial robot testbed. By month 15, the consortium reports 70 peer-reviewed publications on new knowkedge created. New robotics methods include a variable-autonomy/shared-control system in which our AI-based autonomous robotic grasping and manipulation algorithms can be ergonomically fused with the intentions of a human operator via a virtual reality and haptics user interface. This has been implemented on the industrial RoMaNS robot testrig at the NNL Workington nuclear industry site and has been tested by nuclear industry experts. By month 18, we have achieved 100 peer reviewed publications. Further tech-transfer work has been done, including two more SBRI projects funded by InnovateUK. We continue to work with NNL Ltd in an advisory role to help progress the major commercial robotics initiatives of Sellafield Ltd. We have been working with Shield Investment Management to develop business models for commercialisation of hub technologies to additional industries outside of nuclear. The European Commission and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency have been promoting our work and inviting us to present at major international events. Scott (Bristol) has carried out successful and highly publicised unmanned radiation surveys at Chernobyl and other important legacy sites in Ukraine. Essex have carried out a number of experiments and published results of effects of radiation on sensors and embedded systems. |
| Exploitation Route | These are fundamental technologies covering a vast array of robotics, AI and sensing functionalities, with applications across numerous sectors. We are primarily targeting the nuclear industry, but we are also receiving strong interest from other sectors (e.g. advanced manipulation capabilities for the manufacturing industry). We have already won major new Industrial Strategy funding as a part of the Faraday Institute on electric vehicle batteries. Disassembling these batteries for recycling is extremely hazardous (potentially explosive, highly flammable and very toxic gasses). We are now showing how the vision and manipulation capabilities that we developed for nuclear decommissioning (vision-guided robotic cutting, grasping, manipulating) can be transferred to robotic disassembly of EV Lithium ion batteries. |
| Sectors | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Agriculture, Food and Drink,Chemicals,Construction,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Electronics,Energy,Environment,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections,Security and Diplomacy,Transport,Other |
| URL | http://www.ncnr.org.uk |
| Description | Months 1-6: Scott (U Bristol) has carried out deployments of UAV aerial radiation surveys. Stolkin (U Birmingham) has been sending team members to implement advanced robotic grasping and manipulation methods on the industrial robot testrig at National Nuclear Lab Ltd's industrial Workington site. Scott has continued in his advisory roles (e.g. House of Lords Special Advisor on Nuclear Technologies), and Stolkin has continued in his embedded role with the UK nuclear industry as Royal Society Industry Fellow for nuclear robotics - working closely with NNL Ltd. Several PIs/researchers have continued parallel work at high TRL via their respective spinout companies, including via InnovateUK projects. This has included new work with NNL Ltd on high-TRL robotic laser-cutting of radioactive waste. It has also included involvement of hub members in a large number of InnovateUK SBRI nuclear robotics projects. Months 7-9: Scott has shown how his UAVs and novel radiation sensors can be deployed to carry out prospecting surveys at a uranium ore mine in Arizona, USA. Stolkin's team have upgraded the autonomous vision system on NNL Ltd's robotic laser-cutting test-rig. Scott has worked with spinout ImiTec and InnovateUK to show proof of principle for using radiation sensors to detect, and selectively cut out, highly contaminated parts during robotic laser cutting. This shows strong promise for combination with the advanced autononomous methods of Stolkin's team, and the work of Lancaster (Taylor) using heavy duty hydraulic manipulators. PI Stolkin has presented NCNR to House of Commons MP Thangam Debbonaire, who has an Industrial Parliamentary Fellowship to investigate the energy industry. Debbonaire has stated intention to include this in her report to the House of Commons. Stolkin's team have developed a novel model-free and learning-free approach to vision-guided autonomou grasping. This has attracted large interest from the UK nuclear industry and is now being installed on National Nuclear Lab Ltd's industrial robot testbed. We have also won major new Industrial Strategy funding as a part of the Faraday Institute on electric vehicle batteries. Disassembling these batteries for recycling is extremely hazardous (potentially explosive, highly flammable and very toxic gasses). We are now showing how the vision and manipulation capabilities that we developed for nuclear decommissioning (vision-guided robotic cutting, grasping, manipulating) can be transferred to robotic disassembly of EV Lithium ion batteries. Months13-15: new robotics methods include a variable-autonomy/shared-control system in which our AI-based autonomous robotic grasping and manipulation algorithms can be ergonomically fused with the intentions of a human operator via a virtual reality and haptics user interface. This has been implemented on the RoMaNS industrial robot testrig at the NNL Ltd Workington nuclear industry site and has been tested by nuclear industry experts. We have also undertaken additional work to identify applications for our advanced robot control methods in other industrial sectors outside of nuclear, interacting with end-users in manufacturing and other sectors. New work by Scott et al. (Bristol) is commencing with invitation to deliver unmanned radiation surveys at Chernobyl and other legacy sites in Ukraine. New tech transfer work has been undertaken, including two more SBRI projects funded by InnovateUK and Sellafield Ltd. PI Stolkin has now established the Expert Group on Robotics and Remote Systems for the OECD's global Nuclear Energy Agency representing 33 nations. As elected Chair of the Expert Group, our research is directly feeding into formal advice provided to international policy makers by the OECD. As of Month 41, the consortium has published 300 peer reviewed papers reporting novel robotics and AI advances. Substantial additional funding has been won, and a wide variety of collaborations with industry are continuing. As of Month 54, the consortium has published more than 400 peer reviewed papers. Substantial new projects with nuclear and non-nuclear industry have been won and are ongoing. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2017 |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Electronics,Energy,Environment,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology,Transport,Other |
| Impact Types | Societal,Economic,Policy & public services |
| Description | Creation and leadership of OECD NEA Expert Group on Robotic and Remote Systems |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Membership of a guideline committee |
| Impact | EGRRS outputs feed into many areas of regulation and policy for the safe management of nuclear legacy facilities |
| URL | https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_25235/expert-group-on-the-application-of-robotics-and-remote-system... |
| Description | Advancing Location Accuracy via Collimated Nuclear Assay for Decommissioning Robotic Applications (ALACANDRA) |
| Amount | £1,208,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/V026941/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2021 |
| End | 02/2025 |
| Description | Advancing location accuracy via collimated nuclear assay for decommissioning robotic applications |
| Amount | £1,208,438 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/V026941/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2021 |
| End | 02/2025 |
| Description | Automatic Posture and Balance Support for Supernumerary Robotic Limbs |
| Amount | £373,312 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/T027746/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 06/2020 |
| End | 06/2023 |
| Description | Automato |
| Amount | £500,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 102642 |
| Organisation | Innovate UK |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 10/2017 |
| End | 03/2019 |
| Description | Autonomous Inspection for Responsive and Sustainable Nuclear Fuel Manufacture (AIRS-NFM) |
| Amount | £1,499,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/V051059/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2021 |
| End | 09/2024 |
| Description | CHIST-ERA: Perception-guided robust and reproducible robotic grasping and manipulation |
| Amount | € 1,115,000 (EUR) |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2019 |
| End | 12/2021 |
| Description | CORSMAL - Collaborative object recognition, shared manipulation and learning |
| Amount | € 865,796 (EUR) |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2019 |
| End | 03/2022 |
| Description | Centre for Innovative Nuclear Decommissioning Engineering - In situ measurement and analysis of sludge using robotic platform |
| Amount | £50,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Sellafield Ltd |
| Sector | Private |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 10/2017 |
| End | 09/2021 |
| Description | Eversion and Growing Robots for Radiologically Constrained Environments Characterisation and Decommissioning |
| Amount | £29,628 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Nuclear Decommissioning Authority NDA |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2022 |
| End | 09/2026 |
| Description | Eversion and Growing Robots: Pipe Navigation, Inspection and Characterisation |
| Amount | £116,296 (GBP) |
| Organisation | National Nuclear Laboratory |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2022 |
| End | 09/2026 |
| Description | Faraday Institute - Recycling of Lithium Ion Batteries (ReLiB) |
| Amount | £10,000,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | The Faraday Institution |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2018 |
| End | 03/2021 |
| Description | GRASP-berry: High speed picking soft fruit robots |
| Amount | £747,622 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 104587 |
| Organisation | Innovate UK |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2019 |
| End | 03/2021 |
| Description | GrowBot - Eversion robot for the construction sector |
| Amount | £498,696 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 96566 |
| Organisation | Innovate UK |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2021 |
| End | 03/2022 |
| Description | H2020 |
| Amount | € 6,987,715 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | 732737 |
| Organisation | European Commission H2020 |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | Belgium |
| Start | 01/2017 |
| End | 12/2020 |
| Description | HEAP: Human-Guided Learning and Benchmarking of Robotic Heap Sorting |
| Amount | £417,798 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/S033718/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2019 |
| End | 03/2022 |
| Description | I. Farkhatdinov: Development of education robotic manipulator, IEEE Robotics & Automation Society award. |
| Amount | $8,500 (USD) |
| Organisation | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) |
| Sector | Learned Society |
| Country | United States |
| Start | |
| Description | InnovateUK |
| Amount | £961,440 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 103339 |
| Organisation | Innovate UK |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 10/2017 |
| End | 09/2019 |
| Description | LianaBot |
| Amount | £249,761 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 89911 |
| Organisation | Innovate UK |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2021 |
| End | 03/2022 |
| Description | MAN^3: huMAN-inspired robotic MANipulation for advanced MANufacturing |
| Amount | £310,597 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/S00453X/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2019 |
| End | 12/2021 |
| Description | Mobile sensor network for deployment and characterisation of the environment in nuclear sites |
| Amount | £50,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Sellafield Ltd |
| Sector | Private |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2019 |
| End | 12/2022 |
| Description | NCNR FlexiFund grant: Analysis of cluttered and occluded scenes from millimetre wave RF data. Hansard M; Rajab K; |
| Amount | £75,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2019 |
| Description | NCNR FlexiFund grant: Electroadhesion for anchoring robots in challenging environments. Zhang K; Althoefer K; Godaba H; |
| Amount | £96,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2019 |
| Description | NCNR Flexifund grant: Motion planning and trajectory generation for a robot assisted laser cutting manipulator |
| Amount | £100,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2020 |
| End | 02/2021 |
| Description | QMUL EPSRC Core Equipment Bid: Q-Arena - a multidisciplinary research environment for human-centred robotics and interactive engineering |
| Amount | £497,496 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/V035304/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2020 |
| End | 04/2022 |
| Description | Research and Development Competition for RAI in Extreme and Challenging Environments; Project Title: Wormbot |
| Amount | £150,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 104059 |
| Organisation | Innovate UK |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2018 |
| End | 09/2019 |
| Description | Robotics and Autonomous Systems Application over £100k or Over 12 months - ISCF (Project title: iGRASP) |
| Amount | £278,202 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 103676 |
| Organisation | Innovate UK |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2018 |
| End | 03/2019 |
| Description | STREAM - Snake robotics for on-engine advanced thermal mapping |
| Amount | £299,835 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 100432 |
| Organisation | Innovate UK |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2021 |
| End | 10/2022 |
| Description | Sort and segregate nuclear waste: phase 1 (SBRI competition) |
| Amount | £60,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Nuclear Decommissioning Authority NDA |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2021 |
| End | 06/2021 |
| Description | The First Fleet. The world's first fleet of multi modal soft fruit robots |
| Amount | £1,242,624 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 105151 |
| Organisation | Innovate UK |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2019 |
| End | 03/2022 |
| Description | Using Machine Learning Techniques to Optimise the Motion Performance of Soft Robots Physically Interacting with their Environment |
| Amount | £99,076 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2021 |
| End | 09/2024 |
| Title | Continuous integration and testing platform |
| Description | Integrated continuous testing and integration server solution |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | improved software quality, continuous integration and deployment in large-scale robotics software projects |
| URL | https://github.com/LCAS/rosdistro/wiki |
| Title | Dosimetry measurements for static irradiator systems |
| Description | The diamond detector technology is now routinely used at Bristol to calibrate and confirm the dose rates given to samples in the University's Cs-137 irradiator system. This chamber based system offers significant variation in dose dependent on sample position and hence the compact diamond dosimeter is ideal for rapid qualification of irradiation dose for test samples. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The diamond dosimeter allows rapid and real-time measurement of radiation dose at very high photon fluxes (1000's of Gy/hr). Previously the method of measuring dose at such high intensities was to use TLDs or Alanine, which both require analysis post-irradiation to determine the experienced dose (they are not real-time dose measurement techniques). |
| Title | Thorvald Simulation, a versatile modular mobile robot platform for extreme environments |
| Description | Software release of high-fidelity simulation of mobile robot platform "Thorvald", in collaboration with SAGA Ltd., to facilitate research in reinforcement learning and adaptation for mobile robots in extreme environments (employed in nuclear and agricultural robotics). |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | A testbed and "training gym" for mobile robots |
| URL | https://github.com/LCAS/rosdistro/wiki/repos#thorvald |
| Title | A highly scalable and autonomous spectroscopic radiation mapping system with resilient IoT detector units for dosimetry, safety, and security |
| Description | Data contained within the journal paper "A highly scalable and autonomous spectroscopic radiation mapping system with resilient IoT detector units for dosimetry, safety, and security" |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/1hqjys85s8e392qg3fmqkm2o0i/ |
| Title | An Open-Source Iterative python Module for the Automated Identification of Photopeaks in Photon Spectra |
| Description | Code and Isotopic Libraries for the python identification and peak-fitting module. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/28ssj76dp5rx02tf8edowbfe3n/ |
| Title | An Open-Source Iterative python Module for the Automated Identification of Photopeaks in Photon Spectra v2.0 |
| Description | Code and Isotopic Libraries for the python identification and peak-fitting module. see also An Open-Source Iterative python Module for the Automated Identification of Photopeaks in Photon Spectra v1.0 https://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/28ssj76dp5rx02tf8edowbfe3n |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/n3cm8fnce5ri2k55dlipee3st/ |
| Title | Drum Radiological models and Drum Scanning Models |
| Description | Valentin Piau (supervised by Guido Herrmann) from École Nationale Supérieure de Physique, Électronique et Matériaux, Grenoble, France, submitted final report for his 3 months (June-August 2018) project on "Automated ILW drum scanning using a robot manipulator - Development of a simulation tool". This tool is to be the basis of alpha, beta and gamma inspection algorithms for decommissioning. Gamma Source, Drum, drum material and gamma detector models have been developed. KUKA based scanning algorithms have been tested in simulation (relevant to NCNR and RAIN). Detail to be updated as work advances. |
| Type Of Material | Computer model/algorithm |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The models will be an important basis to practical scanning algorithms for other Researchers. Detail to be updated as work advances. |
| Title | Tactile and visual dataset for mechanical fractures prototypes |
| Description | Tactile and visual dataset for mechanical fractures prototypes (F Palermo, S Poslad, K Althoefer, I Farkhatdinov) |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Tactile and visual dataset for mechanical fractures prototypes |
| Description | AWE - Disruptive technologies collaboration |
| Organisation | Atomic Weapons Establishment |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | We have been working with the AWE as collaborators providing them with intelligence about new sensor technologies arising from the grant. Specifically AWE have been engaging on the development of low power sensor pobs for monitoring temperature, humidity and radiation intensity. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The have attended Industrial Advisory Board meetings, provided contacts within BEIS and established a side project on sensor developments for monitoring storage environments at the Aldermaston site. We have been advised that they will let us deploy our sensor units on the Aldermaston site as a significant demonstration of the technology. They have also provided access to their advanced SIMS capability to make quantification of Boron in the diamond films we've been making. |
| Impact | This partnership has led to us developing a PCB version of our prototype sensor pod technology that will be purchased and deployed by the AWE as a prototype demonstration. The project has been inherently cross-disciplinary involving electronic engineers, device physicists and materials scientists. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Babcock-Plymouth Collaboration |
| Organisation | Babcock International Group |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Babcock is supporting the research toward the development of a robotic system capable of inspecting the interior of pipelines of different size and bends. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Babcock provides the requirements and the specification for the scenario and the capabilities of the robotic system. The company is also participating at regular meetings where current state of the work and plan are discussed and updated. |
| Impact | This collaboration resulted in the design and development of a prototype. This prototype is similar to a micro-race flying system. The system includes an external cage which can made flying more robust also in the presence of bumps due to the confided operational space. The cage is designed on the basis of the "gimbal" system. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Bristol-Plymouth Collaboration |
| Organisation | University of Bristol |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The collaboration aims at exploring the deployment of a novel radiological sensor on a robotic system for mapping the interior of pipes with different diameters and types of bend. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Contribution provided in terms of specification of the sensor device (e.g., weight, dimensions, voltage, OS) in order to design the interfaces. |
| Impact | Prototype of a caged micro-race flying system extended with propellers to support the payload of the sensor. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Cavendish-Babcock |
| Organisation | Cavendish Nuclear |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Providing information and updates on the gamma and beta voltaic technologies as part of the ASPIRE project as well as the wide nuclear robotics research hub grants. |
| Collaborator Contribution | 2 days per year (£1600 est.) for expert advice, consultancy and attendance at the annual advisory board |
| Impact | None as yet |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Collaboration with Australian Centre for Robot Vision |
| Organisation | Australian Centre for Robotic Vision |
| Country | Australia |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | We have been collaborating extensively with a post-doc (Valerio Ortenzi) and the director (Prof. Peter Corke) of the Australian Centre for Robot Vision. This is one of the top institutes (and top profs) in the world, and we have made high-impact collaborative research papers with them, as well as an extended research exchange visit from Ortenzi previously. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Contributed time of Ortenzi and Corke. |
| Impact | Several papers published and several more in preparation. Led by our Birmingham team but with input from the Australian team. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Development of nationwide robotics and engineering masterclasses with Royal Institution |
| Organisation | The Royal Institution of Great Britain |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | NCNR provided a substantial part of the funding of Royal Institution's Engineering educational outreach programme, funding the salary of Ri's engineering lead. University of Birmingham robotics team worked with Ri to develop "masterclass in a box" kits and materials to support outreach workshops for school children across UK. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Ri established a UK-wide network of schools and educators, and organised a series of workshops reaching a large number of school districts. |
| Impact | series of workshops reaching a large number of school districts |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | InnovateUK SBRI collaboration - nuclear decommissioning robot |
| Organisation | National Nuclear Laboratory |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | University of Birmingham researchers, via our spinout consultancy A.R.M Robotics Ltd (a specialised robotics SME), collaborated with Bristol Robotics Lab, National Nuclear Lab, and several other SMEs, as part of an InnovateUK SBRI project. In this project we built and demonstrated a semi-autonomous mobile manipulator robot, which could autonomously navigate and cut pipework. The contribution of the Birmingham team was the advanced vision system and robot arm control. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Bristol Robotics Lab assembled the robot platform, provided the semi-autonomous vehicle navigation software, and hosted the project demo. NNL Ltd provided project management and expert nuclear industry advice and guidance. University of Bristol provided expert advice on radiometric sensor payload for the robot. University of Essex provided expert advice about potential for making the onboard computer systems radiation resilient. |
| Impact | Highly successful feasibility study. Delivered working prototype and successful live demonstration of autonomously navigating across a room, building up a 3D model of pipework, and autonomously cutting the pipe with a tool on a vehicle-mounted robot arm. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | InnovateUK SBRI collaboration - nuclear decommissioning robot |
| Organisation | University of Bristol |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | University of Birmingham researchers, via our spinout consultancy A.R.M Robotics Ltd (a specialised robotics SME), collaborated with Bristol Robotics Lab, National Nuclear Lab, and several other SMEs, as part of an InnovateUK SBRI project. In this project we built and demonstrated a semi-autonomous mobile manipulator robot, which could autonomously navigate and cut pipework. The contribution of the Birmingham team was the advanced vision system and robot arm control. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Bristol Robotics Lab assembled the robot platform, provided the semi-autonomous vehicle navigation software, and hosted the project demo. NNL Ltd provided project management and expert nuclear industry advice and guidance. University of Bristol provided expert advice on radiometric sensor payload for the robot. University of Essex provided expert advice about potential for making the onboard computer systems radiation resilient. |
| Impact | Highly successful feasibility study. Delivered working prototype and successful live demonstration of autonomously navigating across a room, building up a 3D model of pipework, and autonomously cutting the pipe with a tool on a vehicle-mounted robot arm. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | InnovateUK SBRI collaboration - nuclear decommissioning robot |
| Organisation | University of Essex |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | University of Birmingham researchers, via our spinout consultancy A.R.M Robotics Ltd (a specialised robotics SME), collaborated with Bristol Robotics Lab, National Nuclear Lab, and several other SMEs, as part of an InnovateUK SBRI project. In this project we built and demonstrated a semi-autonomous mobile manipulator robot, which could autonomously navigate and cut pipework. The contribution of the Birmingham team was the advanced vision system and robot arm control. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Bristol Robotics Lab assembled the robot platform, provided the semi-autonomous vehicle navigation software, and hosted the project demo. NNL Ltd provided project management and expert nuclear industry advice and guidance. University of Bristol provided expert advice on radiometric sensor payload for the robot. University of Essex provided expert advice about potential for making the onboard computer systems radiation resilient. |
| Impact | Highly successful feasibility study. Delivered working prototype and successful live demonstration of autonomously navigating across a room, building up a 3D model of pipework, and autonomously cutting the pipe with a tool on a vehicle-mounted robot arm. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | InnovateUK SBRI collaboration - nuclear decommissioning robot |
| Organisation | University of the West of England |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | University of Birmingham researchers, via our spinout consultancy A.R.M Robotics Ltd (a specialised robotics SME), collaborated with Bristol Robotics Lab, National Nuclear Lab, and several other SMEs, as part of an InnovateUK SBRI project. In this project we built and demonstrated a semi-autonomous mobile manipulator robot, which could autonomously navigate and cut pipework. The contribution of the Birmingham team was the advanced vision system and robot arm control. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Bristol Robotics Lab assembled the robot platform, provided the semi-autonomous vehicle navigation software, and hosted the project demo. NNL Ltd provided project management and expert nuclear industry advice and guidance. University of Bristol provided expert advice on radiometric sensor payload for the robot. University of Essex provided expert advice about potential for making the onboard computer systems radiation resilient. |
| Impact | Highly successful feasibility study. Delivered working prototype and successful live demonstration of autonomously navigating across a room, building up a 3D model of pipework, and autonomously cutting the pipe with a tool on a vehicle-mounted robot arm. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Jacobs Engineering |
| Organisation | Jacobs Engineering Group |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Working with Jacobs in aspects of research related to extreme environment sensors and robotics for nuclear and space applications. Providing expertise and advice for Jacobs and also linking through to the NASA research programme (via Jacobs) |
| Collaborator Contribution | Funding support for 4 MSc students, with an expectation for annual funding for 4 MSc students plus direct funding for other projects. |
| Impact | A series of technical reports have been produced for Jacobs (4 in total so far) which have been fed into their US programme. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Japan Atomic Energy Agency |
| Organisation | Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) |
| Country | Japan |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | The grant award has led to the establishment of a strategic partnership with the JAEA based around fallout and fuel debris analysis. There has been an MoU signed by both institutions to permit collaboration, exchange of personnel and samples. Subsequently, the remit of the MoU has been widened (2019) to include joint work on diamond battery (ASPIRE) technology, high dose-rate diamond detectors and radiation mapping robots. We have contributed expertise, consultancy, shared data recorded from Japanese samples and sites and have won several experimental sessions at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron facility for fallout particle analysis. JAEA colleagues have participated in all of our UK synchrotron experiments and participated and presented at UK workshops and conferences e.g. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Already we have had over 15 visits from the JAEA since the start of the partnership as well as a suite of fallout samples from Fukushima and access to nuclear fallout storage sites and other restricted areas of the Fukushima fallout zone. The site access and samples provided are extremely valuable. |
| Impact | Several joint publications. Widening of the relationship to cover other areas such as radiation detection, UAVs and most recently diamond batteries. |
| Start Year | 2016 |
| Description | Korea-UK-Germany-Russia-USA collaboration on nuclear emergency response robots |
| Organisation | Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute |
| Country | Korea, Republic of |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | KAERI invited UoB/NCNR to partner (with delegates from Russia, Germany and USA) on a programme of collaborationon emergency response robots for nuclear facilities. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Participation in collaborative exchange visits and workshops. |
| Impact | Series of workshops and exchanges |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute (KURRI) |
| Organisation | Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute |
| Country | Japan |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We have been working with KURRI as our project partners to utilise their test reactor and Co-60 irradiation facility in Osaka to (I) neutron activate C-13 diamond samples and (2) utilise the irradiator facility to test our gamma voltaic prototype devices. As part of this we have modelled neutron irradiations of our diamond wafers in their reactor core. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The have attended Industrial Advisory Board meetings in person and by Skype. They have also provided access to their Co-60 irradiator and have already deployed one set of test samples in their reactor core for neutron irradiation. They have provided VERY substantial in-kind support by providing this unique access. |
| Impact | Access to a test reactor! We don't have one in the UK so this is a very significant outcome. What is even more substantial is that we don't have to pay for access. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | OECD Nuclear Energy Agency - Expert Group on Robotic and Remote Systems |
| Organisation | Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD |
| Country | France |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Prof Stolkin Chairs the international Expert group on Robotic and Remote Systems, for the NEA representing over 30 nuclearised nations. Prof. Stolkin worked with OECD NEA during 2019 to establish the Expert Group, comprising 54 members from 14 countries and the European Commission. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Large international collaboration to develop guidance and information to member and observer nations. |
| Impact | Report on first two years of work: "Status, barriers and benefits of robotic and remote systems applications in nuclear decommissioning and radioactive waste management" |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Participation in the Centre for Innovative Nuclear Decommissioning Engineering (CINDe) and other Sellafield Ltd / NNL funded PhD student research |
| Organisation | National Nuclear Laboratory |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | The Centre is a partnership between Manchester, Lancaster and Liverpool Universities, together with Sellafield Ltd and the National Nuclear Laboratory. Its mission is to innovate and deliver future engineering leaders, supporting the UK's nuclear decommissioning programme in west Cumbria. Within CINDe, early projects hosted by Lancaster University Engineering Department include robotic systems for the analysis of sludge and research into the decontamination of plutonium contaminated brick surfaces. In addition to these CINDe projects, the Lancaster academic team for the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics supervised four other Sellafield Ltd and/or National Nuclear Laboratory funded research student projects i.e. connected to instrumentation and robotics for nuclear decommissioning. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Full and part funding of research studentships (PhD), joint industry supervision and provision of technical information about specific nuclear decommissioning research challenges. |
| Impact | To date: articles submitted and under review, together with PhD studentships in progress. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Participation in the Centre for Innovative Nuclear Decommissioning Engineering (CINDe) and other Sellafield Ltd / NNL funded PhD student research |
| Organisation | Sellafield Ltd |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | The Centre is a partnership between Manchester, Lancaster and Liverpool Universities, together with Sellafield Ltd and the National Nuclear Laboratory. Its mission is to innovate and deliver future engineering leaders, supporting the UK's nuclear decommissioning programme in west Cumbria. Within CINDe, early projects hosted by Lancaster University Engineering Department include robotic systems for the analysis of sludge and research into the decontamination of plutonium contaminated brick surfaces. In addition to these CINDe projects, the Lancaster academic team for the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics supervised four other Sellafield Ltd and/or National Nuclear Laboratory funded research student projects i.e. connected to instrumentation and robotics for nuclear decommissioning. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Full and part funding of research studentships (PhD), joint industry supervision and provision of technical information about specific nuclear decommissioning research challenges. |
| Impact | To date: articles submitted and under review, together with PhD studentships in progress. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Plymouth-Lincoln Collaboration |
| Organisation | University of Lincoln |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The collaboration aims to design and develop a novel approach for safe autonomous navigation of the Thorvald robot. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Research on algorithms based on Deep Reinforcement Learning. |
| Impact | Expected results will include a joint research article and/or conference proceeding. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Trading control between a human and Ai in variable autonomy robotic systems |
| Organisation | Karlsruhe Institute of Technology |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Collaborative experiments and paper on variable autonomy control frameworks, achieving state of the art performance |
| Collaborator Contribution | Brought expertise on negotiation theory |
| Impact | A paper has been submitted |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Title | Captain Toolbox for Time Series Analysis, Forecasting and Control - new algorithms added |
| Description | The CAPTAIN Toolbox is a collection of Matlab functions for system identification, time series analysis, forecasting and control. The current developers are Prof. Peter Young, Dr. Wlodek Tych and Prof. James Taylor, Lancaster University, UK. Although the toolbox has been available for many years, new and improved algorithms have been added to the package as a result of recent EPSRC funded research. For details see e.g. Taylor, C.J., Young, P.C., Tych, W., Wilson, E.D. (2018) New developments in the CAPTAIN Toolbox for Matlab with case study examples, IFAC-PapersOnLine, 51, 15, 694-699, 2018 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2018.09.202). |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Impact | The toolbox is used for the analysis of numerous biological, environmental, engineering and socio-economic processes, as illustrated by some of the articles in the scientific literature that cite the following: Taylor, C.J., Pedregal, D.J., Young, P.C. and Tych, W. (2007) Environmental time series analysis and forecasting with the Captain toolbox, Environmental Modelling and Software, 22, pp. 797-814 (dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2006.03.002). |
| Title | Open Source Contributions to the L-CAS ROS software repository |
| Description | Outcomes of research are released to community and partners as part of the L-CAS ROS software repository |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | ease of use and deployment of developed algorithms and software component. Download statistics for released software averages current at around 500-1000 individual installations of software per year. |
| URL | https://github.com/LCAS/rosdistro/wiki |
| Description | 2019 Royal Institution Engineering Masterclass by Dr Stephen Monk on Robotic Autonomous Vehicles |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | 2019 Royal Institution Engineering Masterclass (13-14yr olds) on self driving cars, hosted 25/05/2019 by the Engineering Department at Lancaster University. Organised by Dr Irene Wise and delivered by Dr Steve Monk. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | 2019 Royal Institution Engineering Masterclass by Meghnaa Dhanji on Micro-Drones and the Dynamics of Flight |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | 2019 Royal Institution Engineering Masterclass (13-14yr olds) on micro drones and the dynamics of flight, hosted 8/06/2019 by the Engineering Department at Lancaster University. Organised by Dr Irene Wise and delivered by Meghnaa Dhanji (UCL). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | AWE board meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Regular update on progress to the AWE Strategic board with University of Bristol |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | AWE briefing day regarding use of robotics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Meeting with Dr Andrew Wallwork from the AWE to discuss the use of robots for advanced manufacturing and concept redevelopment for glovebox working |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Alex Smith, talk on "Robotics in Extreme Environments" at Bristol Robotics Laboratory Seminar Series |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Seminar: Robotics in Extreme Environments 11/11/2021, Bristol Robotics Laboratory. Alex Smith presented work from NCNR in an online seminar to BRL staff. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Alpha Characterisation Capability Workshop with National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) and Sellafield Ltd. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | On 02 AUG 2018, Bristol's research team of South West Nuclear Hub attended a workshop held by NNL and Sellafield Ltd. The workshop was at the NNL Workington Laboratory with attendants from various UK universities, in order to develop a sensing solution to a new decommissioning project at Sellafield. At the workshop, the current alpha characterisation approaches that are used in Sellafield were presented. The attending research teams introduced their developed alpha characterisation methods, including the Raman Spectrometer and the radiation sensor developed by the University of Bristol team, to NNL and Sellafield Ltd. After the workshop, a site-visit was carried out at the NNL Laboratory. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Althoefer K gave a presentation on "Soft robots interacting with humans and other fragile objects" at Robotics webinar hosted by IEEE, 25 Nov 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer K gave a presentation on "Soft robots interacting with humans and other fragile objects" at Robotics webinar hosted by IEEE, 25 Nov 2020 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Althoefer K gave a university talk |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer K gave an online talk on "Designing and Fabricating Soft Robots: Challenges and Tricks of the Trade", QMUL-SEMS On-Campus Talks, 23 Nov 2020 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Althoefer K gave an invited keynote on "Making Robots for Humans: Embracing the Future" at 5th IEEE UK & Ireland RAS Conference in Edinburgh, 23 Feb 2022. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer K gave an invited keynote on "Making Robots for Humans: Embracing the Future" at 5th IEEE UK & Ireland RAS Conference in Edinburgh, 23 Feb 2022. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Althoefer K gave an invited online plenary talk on "Bio-inspired Growing Robots: From Conception to Implementation" at the International Workshop on Bionic Engineering, 16 Sept 2021. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer K gave an invited online plenary talk on "Bio-inspired Growing Robots: From Conception to Implementation" at the International Workshop on Bionic Engineering, 16 Sept 2021. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Althoefer K gave an invited online talk on "Creating Robots from Soft Materials", University of Reading, School of Biological Sciences Research Seminar Series, 30 Nov 2021. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer K gave an invited online talk on "Creating Robots from Soft Materials", University of Reading, School of Biological Sciences Research Seminar Series, 30 Nov 2021. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Althoefer K gave an invited online talk on "Robot-human tool handover in an intelligent framework of tactile interaction" at the Turing Fellow Project Presentations, organised by DERI (Digital Environment Research Institute at QMUL), 16 Sept. 2021. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer K gave an invited online talk on "Robot-human tool handover in an intelligent framework of tactile interaction" at the Turing Fellow Project Presentations, organised by DERI (Digital Environment Research Institute at QMUL), 16 Sept. 2021. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Althoefer K gave an invited online talk on "Soft Robots for Minimally Invasive Surgery" at the 2021 ISMR (Model-based Design, Sensing, and Control of Continuum Manipulators and Robotic Flexible Instruments) Workshop titled: Model-based Design, Sensing, and Control of Continuum Manipulators and Robotic Flexible Instruments, 17 Nov 2021. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer K gave an invited online talk on "Soft Robots for Minimally Invasive Surgery" at the 2021 ISMR (Model-based Design, Sensing, and Control of Continuum Manipulators and Robotic Flexible Instruments) Workshop titled: Model-based Design, Sensing, and Control of Continuum Manipulators and Robotic Flexible Instruments, 17 Nov 2021. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Althoefer K gave an online talk on "Novel soft robotics approaches: Addressing the challenges in nuclear decommissioning" at the Technical Webinars by IET, 7 Oct 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer K gave an online talk on "Novel soft robotics approaches: Addressing the challenges in nuclear decommissioning" at the Technical Webinars by IET, 7 Oct 2020 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Althoefer K gave an online talk on "Novel soft robotics approaches: Addressing the challenges in nuclear decommissioning" at the Technical Webinars by IET, 7 Oct 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer K gave an online talk on "Novel soft robotics approaches: Addressing the challenges in nuclear decommissioning" at the Technical Webinars by IET, 7 Oct 2020 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Althoefer K gave an online talk on "Soft Robots Interacting with the Real World" at Leibniz Institute for New Materials, 30 Sep 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer K gave an online talk on "Soft Robots Interacting with the Real World" at Leibniz Institute for New Materials, 30 Sep 2020 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Althoefer K; Jamone L; Farkhatdinov I; Zhang K; gave presentations at EECS Research Week 2020 at Queen Mary University of London (virtually), 25 Nov 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer K; Jamone L; Farkhatdinov I; Zhang K; gave presentations at EECS Research Week 2020 at Queen Mary University of London (virtually), 25 Nov 2020 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Althoefer invited talk: Hand Dexterity Workshop, at the Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique (ISIR), Sorbonne University, Paris. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer gave an invited talk on "Inflatable, stiffness controllable robots: Applications in Human-Robot Interaction" at the Hand Dexterity Workshop, at the Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique (ISIR), Sorbonne University, Paris |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://www.isir.upmc.fr/?lang=en |
| Description | Althoefer keynote: Computer Science and Electronic Engineering Conference (CEEC) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer gave a keynote presentation on "Soft Robotics - at the intersection of physical interaction and perception" at the 11th Computer Science and Electronic Engineering Conference (CEEC) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://ceec.uk/ceec19/keynote-speakers-2/ |
| Description | Althoefer keynote: Soft Robotics Days |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer gave a keynote presentation on Soft Robots for Minimally Invasive Surgery and other Human-robot Interaction Applications |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://jrs2019.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/3 |
| Description | BBC News article - UK drones map Chernobyl's 'Red Forest' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a news article put out to cover the NCNR work conducted in the Chornobyl exclusion zone in 2019. In this work we utilised UAV drones (multi-rotor and fixed wing) to map parts of the exclusion zone (16km2) and found some interesting hotspots in unexpected locations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48193866 |
| Description | Babcock-Cavendish collaboration and meetings on nuclear waste and plant inspection |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A workshop organised by the South West Nuclear Hub for the purposes of sharing information on our research on nuclear waste and nuclear plant inspection. This specifically included diamond detectors as well as laser-driven gamma and neutron imaging of waste packages. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | CBRN presentation at Shrivenham |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Invited talk on the use of UAV technologies in the nuclear industry for surveying and monitoring. Also covering emergency response. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | DTU Green Challenge competition in Copenhagen for project on designing and building an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A group of 4 MEng (Master of Engineering) students from Lancaster University Engineering Department were nominated to participate in the DTU Green Challenge competition in Copenhagen, for the project on designing and building an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Demonstration at Nuclear South West Showcase and Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On 2 and 3 October 2019 Manuel Giuliani, Alex Smith, and Paul Bremner presented the NCNR and RNE projects at the Nuclear South West Showcase and Conference. As part of the showcase, a robotic teleoperation setup for nuclear waste handling was demonstrated. Over 50 showcase visitors, mostly members of the nuclear industry, successfully used the teleoperation robot. Giuliani, Smith, and Bremner also used the conference to establish new contacts to companies in the nuclear industry. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://nuclearsouthwest.co.uk/events/2019/9/2/nuclear-south-west-conference-2019 |
| Description | Demonstration of ANYmal quadruped robot at Goodwood Festival of Speed |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We performed live demonstrations of the ANYmal robot at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a 4 day public event with an estimate of 50,000 attendees. We showed the legged robot navigating an obstacle course with steps, ramps, and rough terrain. This sparked many questions and discussions with the public, including the media, children, and industry representatives, and increased general interest in our research and possibilities for future engagements. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.goodwood.com/flagship-events/festival-of-speed/ |
| Description | EDF Security Meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Nuclear Industry Association security summit hosted in Bristol - Plenary on robotics and innovation for security and surveillance. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | EDF meeting on nuclear safety and security |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Meeting with EDF Head of Security for Hinkley Point C to discuss the use of sensor and robotic systems for site security and surveillance. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Elected Chair of Expert Group on Robotic and Remote Systems for global Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | I have worked with OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency which represents 33 nations. Together we have established the Expert Group on Robotic and Remote Systems. I have been elected Chair of this Expert Group by 40 international experts at the inaugural meeting in 2019. I am continuing regular work with this group to generate policy papers for advising international policy makers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019,2020 |
| Description | Engagement with RACE on user-centred design for robot operators |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | 18/12/2021 - Collaboration meeting between UWE researchers in NCNR and MASCOT operators at RACE to discuss User-centred design experiments. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Expert Witness presentation in Policy Commission on Critical Materials |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Policy Commission on Critical Materials. I was asked to present the state of the art in robotics, sensing and AI for waste materials handling. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Farkhatdinov I gave a plenary talk on "Human Augmentation and Interactive Robotics", international conference "Nonlinearity, Information and Robotics", Innopolis, Russia, December 2020 (online) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Farkhatdinov I gave a plenary talk on "Human Augmentation and Interactive Robotics", international conference "Nonlinearity, Information and Robotics", Innopolis, Russia, December 2020 (online) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Farkhatdinov I gave a plenary talk on "Human Augmentation and Interactive Robotics", international conference "Nonlinearity, Information and Robotics", Innopolis, Russia. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Farkhatdinov I gave a plenary talk on "Human Augmentation and Interactive Robotics", international conference "Nonlinearity, Information and Robotics", Innopolis, Russia, December 2020 (online). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Farkhatdinov I gave a public engagement talk to high school students on "Robotics, education and applications", January 2021 (online). |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Farkhatdinov I gave a public engagement talk to high school students on "Robotics, education and applications", January 2021 (online). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Farkhatdinov I gave a public engagement talk to high school students on "Robotics, education and applications", January 2021 (online). |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Farkhatdinov I gave a public engagement talk to high school students on "Robotics, education and applications", January 2021 (online). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Farkhatdinov keynote at French Robotics Society annual conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Keynote presentation (Farkhatdinov I) Robotics for assisting human mobility; French Robotics Society annual conference, October 2019. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Fox News article on NCNR work in Chernobyl |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a news article put out to cover the NCNR work conducted in the Chornobyl exclusion zone in 2019. In this work we utilised UAV drones (multi-rotor and fixed wing) to map parts of the exclusion zone (16km2) and found some interesting hotspots in unexpected locations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.foxnews.com/science/chernobyl-red-forest-mapped-drones-radioactive-hotspots |
| Description | Geek.com - news article on NCNR Chernobyl research |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a news article put out to cover the NCNR work conducted in the Chornobyl exclusion zone in 2019. In this work we utilised UAV drones (multi-rotor and fixed wing) to map parts of the exclusion zone (16km2) and found some interesting hotspots in unexpected locations. This Geek.com piece runs to 11 pages, so is quite a substantial piece to a wide international network of readers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.geek.com/tech/drones-detect-new-radiation-hot-spots-near-chernobyl-site-1786357/ |
| Description | I. Farkhatdinov: Invited presentation at UK Robotics and Automation exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Invited presentation at UK Robotics and Automation exhibition |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | ICRA 2020 workshop on Human-Robot Handovers, June 4th 2020. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | QMUL has organized ICRA 2020 workshop on Human-Robot Handovers which was successfully held on June 4th 2020. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | IEEE IROS presentation "Getting to know your robot customers: automated analysis of user identity and demographics for robots in the wild" |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | conference talk on paper |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | IMechE Nuclear Decommissioning Knowledge Capture Workshop - 13 February 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | IMechE Nuclear Decommissioning Knowledge Capture Workshop - 13 February 2019: Research Associate, Kaiqiang Zhang, and I participated. This was an ideal opportunity to meet various industrial and governmental stakeholders across Europe involved in various aspects of nuclear decommissioning. The event took place at the Office of Nuclear Regulations in Bootle. (This is reported for NCNR and RAIN) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://nearyou.imeche.org/eventdetail?id=16007 |
| Description | ITV news story on NCNR work in Chernobyl |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a TV news piece put out to cover the NCNR work conducted in the Chornobyl exclusion zone in 2019. The ITV team joined at the end of our research expedition and spent 2 days filming with us to record a news item. In this work we utilised UAV drones (multi-rotor and fixed wing) to map parts of the exclusion zone (16km2) and found some interesting hotspots in unexpected locations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.itv.com/news/2019-04-26/spooky-abandoned-town-near-chenobyl-coming-back-to-life-thanks-t... |
| Description | Ildar Farkhatdinov gave a keynote presentation at COA Education conference Bits, Bugs & Robots |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Keynote presentation |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Ildar Farkhatdinov gave an invited seminar at KoreaTech University, Cheonan, South Korea. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Ildar Farkhatdinov gave an invited seminar at KoreaTech University, Cheonan, South Korea. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Ildar Farkhatdinov gave an invited seminar at Tokyo University of Agriculture Technology |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited seminar at Tokyo University of Agriculture Technology |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Ildar Farkhatdinov gave an invited talk at London Robotics Triathlon competition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited talk at London Robotics Triathlon competition |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Interview with InnovateUK/EPSRC video team |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We have created a video interview, with InnovateUK/EPSRC video team. This included valuable interviews with researchers, industry partners, tech-transfer/commercialisation investors, and end-user experts. Unfortunately this video has not yet been released by EPSRC - but it is an extremely valuable promotional video that should be made public as soon as possible. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Invited Talk at Industrial Partner Toshiba |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Manuel Giuliani, Alex Smith and Mehdi Sobhani from UWE-BRL presented NCNR and the work done at UWE-BRL on Nuclear Robotics to Industry Partner Toshiba in Bristol on 26 July 2018. Purpose of the talk was to meet with Toshiba in order to discuss potential collaborations in NCNR. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Invited presentation at CogX 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Althoefer gave invited presentation on soft robotics at CogX 2018 as part of the Turing Research session; London, 11th of June 2018. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Invited presentation at RAS Chapter Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | K. Althoefer gave an invited presentation on "Fusing function with structure in soft robotics" in The 3nd Annual IEEE UK and Ireland RAS Chapter Conference and The First Annual IFToMM UK MO Conference. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Invited presentation on soft robotics at CogX 2018, London |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The presentation, which was part of the Turing Research session at CogX 2018, was well attended by experts in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics. The presentation by Prof Kaspar Althoefer summarising the latest findings in the area of soft robotics was well received. Possible collaboration with an SME on soft robotics for extreme environments emerged. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://cogx.co/2018-speakers/ |
| Description | Invited research seminar by Prof. James Taylor on mobile robotics for unstructured environments, Southampton, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Invited Research Seminar on Mobile Robotics for Unstructured Environments hosted by the Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Invited talk - Innovation Workshop at European robotics Forum March 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | One of only three projects invited by European Commission to present at this workshop - workshop focused on how to build synergy between research projects an tech-transfer. Great interest from senior commission robotics officers - request for further engagement. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Invited talk at Extreme Environment robotics conference at British Antarctic Survey Dec 2017 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | All four Extreme Environment RAI Hubs were requsted to present at this conference, organised for EPSRC by BAS. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Jamone L gave a keynote presentation on "Robot haptics and dexterity" at the AIxIA 2020 conference. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Jamone L gave a keynote presentation on "Robot haptics and dexterity" at the AIxIA 2020 conference. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | K. Althoefer: Invited presentation on soft robotics at CogX |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Invited presentation on soft robotics at CogX |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | K. Althoefer: Invited presentation on soft robotics at the Turing sponsored IADS (Institute of Applied Data Science) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | K. Althoefer: Invited presentation on soft robotics at the Turing sponsored IADS (Institute of Applied Data Science) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | K. Althoefer: Invited presentation on soft robotics at the Turing sponsored Robotics Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | K. Althoefer: Invited to present on soft robotics at the Turing sponsored Robotics Workshop |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Ketao Zhang gave an invited keynote at The 12th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, China. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Ketao Zhang gave an invited keynote at The 12th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, China. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Keynote at "The Road to Intelligent Automation" to regional Industry |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Talk about the opportunities of AI and robotics for automation for businesses and service industries |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-road-to-intelligent-automation-tickets-45799685091 |
| Description | Keynote talk by Prof. James Taylor on Robotics for Nuclear Decommissioning at 13th IFAC Workshop on Adaptive and Learning Control Systems, Winchester, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Keynote talk by Prof. C. J. Taylor on Robotics for Nuclear Decommissioning at 13th IFAC Workshop on Adaptive and Learning Control Systems (ALCOS 2019), Winchester, UK |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Keynote talk/presentation at Sellafield Ltd "Game-changers" event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Keynote talk at Game-changers confererence organised by UK nuclear industry to explore the potential of robotics. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Laboratory demonstration by Prof. James Taylor of nuclear decommissioning robot, Lancaster, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Our mobile dual-manipulator nuclear decommissioning robot and laser-cutting robot were demonstrated to small groups of prospective students and family members as part of a University Open Day. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Lecture on Policy Gradients Methods at the RLSS Summer school in Lille, July 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | I was invited to give a 2 hour lecture on Robot Reinforcement Learning and Policy Search at the Reinforcement Learning Summer School in Lille 2019. There were about 150 participants (mostly PhD Students) attending the lecture. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://rlss.inria.fr/ |
| Description | LiveScience.com - news article on NCNR Chernobyl drone work |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a news article put out to cover the NCNR work conducted in the Chornobyl exclusion zone in 2019. In this work we utilised UAV drones (multi-rotor and fixed wing) to map parts of the exclusion zone (16km2) and found some interesting hotspots in unexpected locations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.livescience.com/65435-chernobyl-forest-drone-survey.html |
| Description | M. Giuliani, P. Bremner, J. David, A. Smith, M. Sobhani, J. Bolarinwa, "Using Robots for Nuclear Decommissioning", Demonstration of NCNR and RNE robot demonstrators at BRL Virtual Conference, June 2021, Bristol. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A mockup demo was setup for the BRL Virtual conference. The demo consists of two robots with some barrels in a nuclear environment running a risk-based navigational framework with three risks - temperature, radiation and collision risk. The robots navigate autonomously accessing the environment for temperature and radiation source and tries to avoid them while also trying to avoid collision by assessing the risk of collision. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://youtu.be/ceMmweklE50 |
| Description | Maeeting with Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) and Kyoto University |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Presenting on technological developments to solve nuclear challenges |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Meeting with BIM 360 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Meeting to discuss potential projects |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Meeting with Framatome |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Presenting on technological developments to solve nuclear challenges |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Meeting with Fraser Nash Consultancy |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Meeting to discuss potential projects between Fraser Nash Consultancy (FNC) and the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Meeting with Nuclear AMRC |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Presenting on technological developments to solve nuclear challenges |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Meeting with Sun Yat-sen University SYSU and Japan Atomic Energy Agency JAEA |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Meeting as a follow-up from the Uranium Science conference to discuss next steps for heightened collaboration |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Meeting with Toshiba Research Ltd |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | On 28 November 2018, Manuel Giuliani and Alex Smith from the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), University of the West of England, met at BRL with researchers from Toshiba Research Europe Ltd (TRL). The BRL team presented NCNR and a tele-operation demonstration to the visitors. TRL presented on their work in wireless communication. The goal of this meeting was to work together on wireless tele-operation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Meeting re Unmanned aerial vehicles |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Meeting with NDA re UAVs in decommissioning |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Nuclear Robotics Workshop at BRL |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Tom Bridgwater from BRL, University of the West of England organised a workshop on nuclear robotics at BRL on 10.12.2019. The workshop was attended by collaborating colleagues from NCNR, RAIN, and RNE. The main topics of the workshop were robot teleoperation, radiation measurements, and challenges in human factors for human-robot interaction in hazardous environments. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Nuclear Waste & Decommissioning Research Forum |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Presenting on technological developments to solve nuclear challenges |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | OECD NEA RWMC |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Engagement with NEA RWMC division - formal presentations at plenary meetings |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020,2021,2022 |
| Description | OECD NEA Rageulators Forum |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentations at plenary meetings of Regulators Forum |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | ORCA Field Trial Blyth |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Industry representatives (primarily from the Oil/Gas Energy sector) attended live robotics demonstrations of capability at the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, which sparked interest and discussion for technology transfer. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | ORCA Field Trials |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Live field demo of quadruped robot negotiating uneven and hazardous in an oil-rig mock up at the Fire Service College, Moreton-on-Marsh. This demonstration has led to further industry interest and engagement. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | ORCA Hub Industry Open Day |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Presentation and live demo of the quadruped robot negotiating uneven terrain. This activity lead to further industrial interest, discussion and engagement. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | One week robotics/AI summer school on nculear robotics for 14-17 yr olds at Royal Institution |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This is a one week course, run by Prof Stolkin and Peter Brewer at Royal Institution of Great Britain, in their prestigious London |Mayfair premises. 24 school children, from 14-17, spend one week working in teams to design, build and prorgam their own robots, inspired by the challenges of nuclear decommissioning. This includes underwater robots, and autonomous robots that use sensors to navigate and manipulate materials in a mockup nuclear environment. The students also learn about otehr areas of robotics, vision systems, AI and machine learning from a series of mini-lectures, as well as how robotics relates to areas of mathematics and physics. The students also learn about Intellectual Property, patenting and entrepreneurialism, and draft their own patent claims for the robots that they develop. We have received outstanding feedback on this coures, and are working with Ri to make these materials scalable for use nationally and internationally. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Panel Member on "200yr Frankenstein" celebration |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | One of three panel members to debate the opportunities and dangers of robots and AI |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://blog.bishopg.ac.uk/blog/frankenstein-anniversary |
| Description | Physics World - article on NCNR work in Chernobyl to find radiation hotposts |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was a news article put out to cover the NCNR work conducted in the Chornobyl exclusion zone in 2019. In this work we utilised UAV drones (multi-rotor and fixed wing) to map parts of the exclusion zone (16km2) and found some interesting hotspots in unexpected locations. For Physics world we produced a magazine article which was also published on the web. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://physicsworld.com/a/glimpsing-chernobyls-hidden%E2%80%AFhotspots/ |
| Description | Poster presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on acoustic transfer path measurements at 23rd International Congress on Acoustics, Achen, Germany |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Poster presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on "Characterising nonlinearities in acoustic transfer path measurements" at 23rd International Congress on Acoustics (ICA2019), Achen, Germany. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Poster presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on mobile sensor network for the nuclear industry at Integrated Waste Management, Penrith, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Poster presentation by Dr A. Montazer on "Design and development of a mobile sensor network for the nuclear industry" at Integrated Waste Management (IWM 2019), Penrith, Cumbria. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Poster presentation by Dr H. Nemati on micro-aerial vehicles in nuclear environments at IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, Manchester, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Poster presentation by Dr H. Nemati on "Fast, vision-based line-following schemes for micro-aerial vehicles in nuclear environments" at IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (IEEE 2019 NSS-MIC), Manchester, UK. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Poster presentation by O. Albrecht on robots for radiological environments at IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, Manchester, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Poster presentation by O. Albrecht on "A dual-arm, hydraulically-actuated robot for operations within radiological environments" at IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (IEEE 2019 NSS-MIC), Manchester, UK. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Poster presentation by T. Fried on analysis of sludge in hazardous environments at 45th Annual Waste Management Symposium, Phoenix, USA |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Abstract and poster by T. Fried, D. Cheneler, S. Monk, C.J. Taylor and J. Dodds on "In situ mechanical analysis of sludge in hazardous environments", to be presentated by T, Fried at 45th Annual Waste Management Symposium (WM 2019), 3-7 March, Phoenix, USA. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://wmsym.org/conference-information/wm2019 |
| Description | Presentation at VAM-HRI |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Research presentation (Omarali B) Toward robot teleoperation with virtual reality: remote scene exploration and object grasping; presentation at workshop Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality for Human-Robot Interaction (VAM-HRI), IEEE/ACM HRI, Cambridge, UK 2020. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Presentation at the 2nd IEEE UK & Ireland RAS Conference, at Queen Mary University of London, London, 22 February 2018; providing overview of NCNR activities |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The presentation was attended by roboticists and experts in robotics for extreme environments. The presented overview was well received and led to discussions with the general public and members of the other hubs on robotics for extreme environments. Potential for collaboration emerged. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/metallurgy-materials/robotics/national-centre-nuclear... |
| Description | Presentation by A. Montazeri on aerial robotic vehicles at 9th IFAC Conference on Manufacturing Modelling, Management, and Control, Berlin |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by A. Montazeri on "Event-triggered based state estimation for autonomous operation of an aerial robotic vehicle" at 9th IFAC Conference on Manufacturing Modelling, Management, and Control, Berlin, Germany. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation by A. Montazeri on quadcopter navigation at IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics, Ilmenau, Germany |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by A. Montazeri on "Output Feedback Sliding Mode Control of Quadcopter using IMU Navigation Sensors", IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics, Ilmenau, Germany. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation by Althoefer (QMUL) at the Innovate UK organised Materials Research Exchange conference (http://www.mre2018.co.uk/programme), held at the Business Design Centre in London, on 12 March 2018, reporting on advancements in soft robotics for extreme environments. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Prof Kaspar Althoefer presented at the Innovate UK organised Materials Research Exchange conference (http://www.mre2018.co.uk/programme), held at the Business Design Centre in London, on 12 March 2018. Althoefer reported on the achievements and challenges of soft robotics operating in extreme and challenging environments including those related to nuclear waste decommissioning and nuclear plant maintenance. New contact to industry (Nuvia) established. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://www.mre2018.co.uk/programme |
| Description | Presentation by Craig West on vision-based positioning system at UKACC 12th International Conference on Control, Sheffield, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Craig West on "A vision-based positioning system with inverse dead-zone control for dual-hydraulic manipulators" at UKACC 12th International Conference on Control, 5-7 September, Sheffield, UK. Authors: West, C., Monk, S., Montazeri, A. and Taylor, C.J. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on analysis of large industrial processes at 9th IFAC Conference on Manufacturing Modelling, Management, and Control, Berlin, Germany |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on "A data-driven statistical approach for monitoring and analysis of large industrial processes" at 9th IFAC Conference on Manufacturing Modelling, Management, and Control, Berlin, Germany |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on frequency domain subspace identification at 18th IFAC Symposium on System Identification, Stockholm, Sweden |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on "Frequency Domain Subspace Identification of Multivariable Dynamical Systems for Robust Control Design" at 18th IFAC Symposium on System Identification (SYSID-2018), Stockholm, Sweden. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on nonlinear system identification at Workshop on Nonlinear System Identification Benchmarks, Liege, Belgium |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on "An Investigation of the Wiener Approach for Nonlinear System Identification Benchmarks" at Workshop on Nonlinear System Identification Benchmarks, Liege, Belgium. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on nuclear robots at 9th International Scientific Conference on Physics and Control, Innopolis, Russia |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on "L1 adaptive controller design for nuclear robots in the presence of loss data, time delay and uncertainty" at 9th International Scientific Conference on Physics and Control (Physcon2019), Innopolis, Russia |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on optimal input excitation design at 18th IFAC Symposium on System Identification, Stockholm, Sweden |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on "Optimal Input Excitation Design for Nonparametric Uncertainty Quantification of Multi-Input Multi-Output Systems" at 18th IFAC Symposium on System Identification (SYSID-2018), 9-11 July, Stockholm, Sweden. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on particle swarm optimization at 9th International Scientific Conference on Physics and Control, Innopolis, Russia |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Dr. A. Montazeri on "Multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm approach for parameter optimization of a 7 DOF robotic manipulator" at 9th International Scientific Conference on Physics and Control (Physcon2019), Innopolis, Russia. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on robots in extreme environments at the Humboldt Colloquium, Oxford, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on "High Performance Grasping and Manipulation for Robots in Extreme Environments" at Humboldt Colloquium: Moving Forward-UK Germany Research Network in a Changing World, March 2018, Oxford University, Oxford, UK. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on state-dependent parameter model identification at 18th IFAC Symposium on System Identification, Stockholm, Sweden |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on "State-dependent parameter model identification for inverse dead-zone control of a hydraulic manipulator" (case study for both EP/M015637/1 and EP/R02572X/1) at 18th IFAC Symposium on System Identification (SYSID-2018), 9-11 July, Stockholm, Sweden. Full list of authors: West, C., Wilson, E.D. (PDRA on EP/M015637/1), Clairon, Q. (PDRA on EP/M015637/1), Monk, S., Montazeri, A. (CI on EP/R02572X/1) and Taylor, C.J. (CI on EP/M015637/1 and EP/R02572X/1). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation by Dr A. Montazeri on unmanned aerial vehicles at 12th IFAC Symposium on Robot Control, Budapest, Hungary |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Dr. A. Montazeri on "Analysis and Design of a Multi-Channel Time-Varying Sliding Mode Controller and its Application in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles" at 12th IFAC Symposium on Robot Control (SYROCO 2018), 27-30 August 2018, Budapest, Hungary. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation by Dr Hamidreza Nemati on unmanned air vehicles at UKACC 12th International Conference on Control, Sheffield, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Dr Hamidreza Nemati on "Design and Development of a Novel Controller for Robust Attitude Control of an Unmanned Air Vehicle for Nuclear Environments" at UKACC 12th International Conference on Control, 5-7 September, Sheffield, UK. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation by Dr M. Bandala on assisted teleoperation at International Conference on Advancements in Nuclear Instrumentation Measurement Methods and their Applications (ANIMMA-2019), Portoroz, Slovenia |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Abstract by Bandala, M., Nemati, H., Montazeri, A. and Taylor, C.J. on "Assisted teleoperation for a dual-manipulator robot and coordination with aerial vehicles for nuclear decommissioning applications" at International Conference on Advancements in Nuclear Instrumentation Measurement Methods and their Applications (ANIMMA-2019), 17-21 June, 2019, Portoroz, Slovenia. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://www.animma.com |
| Description | Presentation by F. Amirjavid on data-driven paradigmatic predictor at 9th IFAC Conference on Manufacturing Modelling, Management, and Control, Berlin, Germany |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by F. Amirjavid on "A fuzzy data-driven paradigmatic predictor" (article co-authored by Dr H. Nemati of the NCNR), 9th IFAC Conference on Manufacturing Modelling, Management, and Control, Berlin, Germany. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation by F. Amirjavid on fuzzy paradigmatic clustering at 9th IFAC Conference on Manufacturing Modelling, Management, and Control, Berlin, Germany |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by F. Amirjavid on "Fuzzy paradigmatic clustering algorithm" (article co-authored by Dr H. Nemati of the NCNR), 9th IFAC Conference on Manufacturing Modelling, Management, and Control, Berlin, Germany. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation by M. Cieslak at 7th International Conference on Radiation in Various Fields of Research, Herceg Novi, Montenegro |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Abstract by M. Cieslak, K.A.A Gamage and J. Taylor on "Study of modulation properties of tungsten based coded-aperture" (Paper ID: RAD7-286), to be presented by M. Cieslak at the 7th International Conference on Radiation in Various Fields of Research (RAD-2019), 10-14 June, Herceg Novi, Montenegro. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://www.rad2019.rad-conference.org |
| Description | Presentation by Prof. James Taylor on nuclear robotics, Lancaster, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Presentation on nuclear robotics control to an audience of family and friends of prospective university students. The presentation showed how cutting edge research, case studies for teaching, student projects and graduate careers can connect. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation by Prof. Peter Young on CAPTAIN Toolbox for Matlab at 18th IFAC Symposium on System Identification, Stockholm, Sweden |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Prof. Peter Young on "New developments in the CAPTAIN Toolbox for Matlab with case study examples", 18th IFAC Symposium on System Identification (SYSID-2018), 9-11 July, Stockholm, Sweden. One of the examples in the presentation related to Chicken Growth Curves (EP/M015637/1) and another robotics (EP/R02572X/1). Author list: Taylor, C.J. (CI for EP/M015637/1 and EP/R02572X/1), Young, P.C., Tych, W., Wilson, E.D. (PDRA for EP/M015637/1). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation by Thomas Burrell on cooperative robotic systems at UKACC 12th International Conference on Control, Sheffield, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Thomas Burrell on "Towards a Cooperative Robotic System for Autonomous Pipe Cutting in Nuclear Decommissioning" at UKACC 12th International Conference on Control, 5-7 September, Sheffield, UK. Authors: Burrell, T., West, C., Monk, S., Montazeri, A. and Taylor, C.J. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation by Y. Alarfaj on generalised predictive control (with robotics example) at 25th IEEE International Conference on Automation and Computing, Lancaster, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation by Y. Alarfaj on "Eigenvalue analysis and case study examples of fractional order generalised predictive control" at 25th IEEE International Conference on Automation and Computing (ICAC), 5-7 September 2019, Lancaster, UK. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation of NCNR testbed at BRL to Chris Skidmore MP Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | 22.03.2019, Manuel Giuliani and Alex Smith from Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of the West of England and Aravinda Srinivasan from Lincoln University presented the NCNR testbed at BRL to Chris Skidmore MP Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation. Several twitter accounts by Skidmore, BRL, and private person accounts tweeted about the presentation and reached a larger audience this way. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation titled "MAT-CNN-SOPC: Motionless Analysis of Traffic Using Convolutional Neural Networks on System-On-a-Programmable-Chip" at AHS 2018 Conference in Edinburgh |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This presentation was very well received and sparked questions and discussions afterwards. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://www.ahs-conf.org/ |
| Description | Presentation titled "Real-Time Application Processing for FPGA-Based Resilient Embedded Systems in Harsh Environments" at AHS 2018 Conference in Edinburgh |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This presentation was very well received and sparked questions and discussion afterwards. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://www.ahs-conf.org/ |
| Description | Presentation titled "Sensors, SLAM and Long-term Autonomy: A Review" at AHS 2018 Conference in Edinburgh |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This presentation was very well received by the audience and sparked questions and discussions afterwards. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012,2018 |
| URL | http://www.ahs-conf.org/ |
| Description | Presentation titled "Weather Classification: A new multi-class dataset, data augmentation approach and comprehensive evaluations of Convolutional Neural Networks" at AHS 2018 Conference in Edinburgh |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This presentation was very well received and sparked questions and discussion afterwards. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://www.ahs-conf.org/ |
| Description | Presentation to IEEE Technical Committee on Robotics and Automation for Nuclear Facilities (RANUF) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited talk for IEEE Tech,. Committee RANUF forum on robotics for nuclear applications. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Presentation to IEEE Technical Committee on Robotics and Automation for Nuclear Facilities (RANUF) at IROS 2017 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited talk at the nuclear forum at IROS international robotics conference. This forum/workshop created by IEEE Tech Committee on Robotics and Automation for Nuclear Facilities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Presentation/talk at IROS robotics conference - shared control robotic grasping |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Maxime Adligble presented his paper at a leading international conference. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OYYWy7c2fs&t=304s |
| Description | Presented NCNR to the Royal Society |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Keynote talk at Royal Society event aimed at Industry Fellows and entreprreneurship. Held at Warwick Manufacturing Centre |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Public interactive teleoperation demo |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | A remote teleoperation system was presented at the Royal Geographical Society as part of the UK robotics week. Visitors could control a master robot system at the society, to control a robot 200 miles away via the internet. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | RAS Poster |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Poster presentation at IEEE UK RAS 2019 conference. Francesca Palermo, Bukeikhan Omarali, Maurizio Valle, Stefan Poslad, Kaspar Althoefer, and Ildar Farkhatdinov: Telemanipulation setup with Interoperability Protocol. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Robotics summer school week at Royal Institution |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Week long summer school for 24 school children who design and build and program their own robots while learning about robotics and AI. Held at the famous Royal Institution premises in central London. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | RollsRoyce NNB visit |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Meeting with Rolls Royce to discuss the use of robotics and sensor systems for the Small Modular Reactor concept they are developing. 2 visitors from Rolls Royce |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Royal Institution engineering masterclass series held at U Birmingham Extreme Robotics Lab. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | A six week series of saturday masterclasses - half day events for schools. Practical engineering and robotics educational activities held inside the state of the art Extreme Robotics Lab facility at U Birimingham. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Royal Society - Drone use in Industry |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | The Foundation for Science and Technology hosted an event on 20 November 2019 at the Royal Society on The Industrial Use of Drones. I was one of the three invited speakers and panel member for the ensuing Q&A sessions. "Drones are already in widespread use across a range of industries, from construction to transport to agriculture, and are generating newer, faster and safer ways of completing and assessing work. Further opportunities are available in the delivery of public services. A new industrial sector of drone services is emerging, and they and the research community are driving forward the technology. Within this rapidly changing space, Government and Parliament will need to regulate. How do they best do this to maximise the advantages of these developments, whilst mitigating the potential negative effects of drones - safety, security, privacy, and noise?" The event attracted politicians and industry leaders to bring them up to speed on the current situation and state of play (technical and regulatory) with the use of drones in UK and international industry. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.foundation.org.uk/Events/2019/The-Industrial-use-of-drones |
| Description | Science Alert - NCNR news article on 'stunning hotspots' in the Chernobyl exclusion zone |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a news article put out to cover the NCNR work conducted in the Chornobyl exclusion zone in 2019. In this work we utilised UAV drones (multi-rotor and fixed wing) to map parts of the exclusion zone (16km2) and found some interesting hotspots in unexpected locations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.sciencealert.com/drone-flyovers-of-chernobyl-reveal-incredible-radiation-hotspots-in-unp... |
| Description | Sky News - article on NCNR drone work over Chernobyl |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a news article put out to cover the NCNR work conducted in the Chornobyl exclusion zone in 2019. In this work we utilised UAV drones (multi-rotor and fixed wing) to map parts of the exclusion zone (16km2) and found some interesting hotspots in unexpected locations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://news.sky.com/story/chernobyl-nuclear-fallout-zone-mapped-by-drones-11714118 |
| Description | TRANSCEND industrial roadshow |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Providing an overview of how activities could link across to the TRANSCEND grant |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Talk at the Humanoids Workshop for Grasping and Manipulation, Birmingham, Nov 2017 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | I gave a talk about policy search methods for grasping and manipulation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | https://www.roboticvision.org/workshop-towards-robust-grasping-and-manipulation-skills-for-humanoids... |
| Description | Talk at the IAS workshop for "Learning Applications in Robotics" in Baden Baden |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Invited talk at the IAS (Intelligent Autonomous Systems) workshop "Learning Applicaitons" in Baden Baden. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://robotics.dei.unipd.it/laiar2018/ |
| Description | Tech World - news article on NCNR Chernobyl drone work |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | This was a news article put out to cover the NCNR work conducted in the Chornobyl exclusion zone in 2019. In this work we utilised UAV drones (multi-rotor and fixed wing) to map parts of the exclusion zone (16km2) and found some interesting hotspots in unexpected locations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.techworld.com/tech-innovation/uk-drones-map-radiation-in-chernobyl-3696554/ |
| Description | The Road to Intelligent Automation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics used to be something only featured in big budget block buster *sci-fi* movies. However, AI is becoming commonplace, and while some within the business community are uneasy and alarmed by this, the businesses and sectors who are at the forefront of embracing AI are already seeing dramatic positive results. Marc Hanheide, Professor of Intelligent Robotics & Interactive Systems in the School of Computer Science at the University of Lincoln will deliver his presentation and give you an insight into this horizon altering technology. He will leave you in no doubt that AI will affect you and your business - it's up to you to ensure this is a positive affect! |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-road-to-intelligent-automation-tickets-49035138419 |
| Description | URM meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Discussion of the developing 'suitcase' project for the surveying of nuclear waste ILW stores using a crane mounted scanning system (the suitcase) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Video of quadruped Robotics Research at Edinburgh |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Created a video overview for general audience of the quadruped locomotion research at the University of Edinburgh. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FslB_VBYwQ&t=14s |
| Description | Visit KUKA Robotics UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | On 11 JUL 2018, the robotic research team led by Dr. Guido Herrmann visited KUKA Robotics UK. The visit aimed to clarify the current KUKA-robot applications in the UK nuclear industry and explore the possibility to deploy KUKA light weight robots in nuclear decommissioning projects. KUKA Robotics introduced two different approaches to control different KUKA robots for nuclear decommissioning. Then, Bristol's research team had a discussion with the KUKA robotics engineers about the possible approaches to control KUKA light weight robots (LBR). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Visit of MP. Rt. Hon. Thangam Debbonaire - Parliamentary Fellow for Energy Industry) - report to parliament |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | House of Commons MP, Thangam Debbonaire, visited the Extreme Robotics Lab (PI Stolkin) at University of Birmingham. Stolkin gave a presentation on National Centre for Nuclear Robotics, and the ERL team then gave a live demo of advanced vision-guided autonomous robotic grasping and manipulation. Debbonaire is the Industry and Parliament Trust (IPT) Fellow for the Energy Industry. This gives her a remit to investigate the energy industry and report back to parliament. Ms. Debbonaire was very impressed by our robotics work, and interested in how robotics could link to the energy sector. She said that she will be mentioning this work in her report to parliament. Ms. Debbonaire also expressed great interest in our educational outreach work, and intends to follow up on this with us for further discussions. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Visit of Shadow-Robotics London with Final 4th Year MEng Group and 3rd Year Project Students |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Visit of Shadow-Robotics (Richard Walker, Managerial Director) in London, 4 March 2019: A final, fourth year student group of five, a third year project student and a PhD-student at the University of Bristol, visited with me Shadow Robotics to gain further knowledge about the haptics enabled teleoperation system of Shadow-Robotics, their robotic hand and their involvement in nuclear robotics. This was an excellent opportunity for the final, fourth year student group as it is working on a teleoperation system in their final year project. The third year student is developing a tendon driven robotic hand. The knowledge exchange with Shadow Robotics can lead to further discussions in the area of teleoperation and hand control. (Reported for EPSRC's NCNR and RAIN) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Winner MathWorks Minidrone Competition at MATLAB EXPO 2019 UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Winner of the MathWorks Minidrone Competition at MATLAB EXPO 2019 UK. Team "VickersRobotics" consists of undergraduate students from the Amirkabir University of Technology, mentored by Lancaster University Research Associate and member of the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics, Dr Hamidreza Nemati. Their goal is to stabilise a track follower micro aerial vehicle ("Parrot Mambo" mini-drone) using vision based sensors. The navigation and control algorithms are deployed to the hardware via Simulink. They aim to enhance the autonomous flight performance by applying Obstacle Avoidance, and Path Planning techniques. The team has successfully progressed through the Round 1 July 2019 and subsequently won the competition at the Round 2 Live Event on 2nd October 2019. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://uk.mathworks.com/academia/student-competitions/minidrones |
| Description | Won/led Nuclear workshop at European Robotics Forum 2018 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | We were competitively awarded (peer review) a prestigious workshop at European Robotics Forum. This attracted international speakers and a large audience. It is very difficult to win such workshops at ERF. This was first time that nuclear has been a workshop theme, and we were then able to win a nuclear workshop successively in 2017 and 2018. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Workshop Talk: Controlling Robots for Safe Physical Interaction |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Gave a talk at The Royal Society of Edinburgh Scotland-China Research Workshop: Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. This led to engagement with Chinese academics and a funding application for a joint Scotland-China research project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.rse.org.uk/event/scotland-china-research-workshop-robotics-and-artificial-intelligence/ |
| Description | Workshop Talk: Physical Human-Robot Interaction with Multi-Limbed and Legged Robots |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Gave talk titled "Physical Human-Robot Interaction with Multi-Limbed and Legged Robots" at IROS 2018 Workshop on HUMAN-ROBOT COOPERATION AND COLLABORATION IN MANIPULATION: ADVANCEMENTS AND CHALLENGES. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.roboticvision.org/humanrobotcooperationirosws/ |
| Description | Workshop on Human-Robot Interaction for Robotics in Extreme Environments |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Alex Smith (NCNR) and Paul Bremner (RNE) were co-organisers for the 3 day Workshop on Human-Robot Interaction for Robotics in Extreme Environments, which took place at the beginning of October 2020. The workshop was organised in collaborations with colleagues from NCNR, RNE, RAIN and ORCA. The workshop had over 120 attendees, with roughly 40% of attendees being from industry. One of the workshops organised by the UWE colleagues featured Daniel Cork, Director of Cerberus Nuclear. As part of the workshop, Manuel Giuliani was part of the discussion panel at the end of the workshop. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Workshop organization at RSS 2019 - Task Informed Robot Grasping |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Together with colleagues I organized the 2nd Task-Informed Grasping workshop at the RSS conference. There were invited talks and a poster session. About 120 people attended the event. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://lcas.lincoln.ac.uk/wp/tig-ii/ |
| Description | Youtube Video Immersive Tele-operation for Nuclear Decommissioning |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | BRL published a Youtube video on their channel showing a demonstration of the lab's work on immersive tele-operation for nuclear decommissioning. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://youtu.be/ahL-Cw305ck |
| Description | Youtube Video Time Lapse: Building a Simulated Nuclear Facility |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | BRL published a Youtube video that shows a time lapse of how the lab built their simulated nuclear facility, a test bed for research on using robots for nuclear decommissioning. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://youtu.be/1QOWcinPT54 |