University of York - Equipment Account
Lead Research Organisation:
University of York
Department Name: UNLISTED
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Brian Fulton (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Berio D
(2016)
Learning dynamic graffiti strokes with a compliant robot
Carruthers A
(2021)
Novel reduced-activation TiVCrFe based high entropy alloys
in Journal of Alloys and Compounds
Guckelsberger C
(2016)
Intrinsically motivated general companion NPCs via Coupled Empowerment Maximisation
Guckelsberger C
(2014)
Effects of Anticipation in Individually Motivated Behaviour on Survival and Control in a Multi-Agent Scenario with Resource Constraints
in Entropy
Kareer A
(2019)
Short communication: 'Low activation, refractory, high entropy alloys for nuclear applications'
in Journal of Nuclear Materials
Page T
(2018)
Plasma temperature measurements using black-body radiation from spectral lines emitted by a capillary discharge
in Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer
Ryan P
(2019)
Comparison of Langmuir probe and laser Thomson scattering for plasma density and electron temperature measurements in HiPIMS plasma
in Physics of Plasmas
Ryan P
(2019)
Comparison of Langmuir probe and laser Thomson scattering for electron property measurements in magnetron discharges
in Physics of Plasmas
Scales R
(2020)
On the brittle-to-ductile transition of the as-cast TiVNbTa refractory high-entropy alloy
in Materialia
Tallents, G J
(2018)
The Creation of Radiation Dominated Plasmas Using Laboratory X-Ray Lasers
| Title | Artworks using SIML Technology Space |
| Description | IGGI PhD Student Memo Atken, using the SIML Technology Space, developed a machine learning multi-screen projection experience. Goldsmiths PhD and MA Computational Arts students also made use of the SIML Space for to develop new works. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Impact | The works were exhibited at the 'The Creative Machine 2 Exhibition' held in November 2018 at the Hatcham Church Gallery in London. |
| URL | http://www.creativemachine2.org/index.html |
| Title | Mutator VR |
| Description | The Mutator VR team led by Artist William Latham alongside mathematicians and programmers Stephen Todd, Lance Putnam and Peter Todd have created a series of VR and machine learning inspired and influenced works using original software modelled on the processes of evolution. Mutator VR blends organic imagery with state-of-the-art, real-time computer animation to create a highly immersive and original audience experience. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Impact | The work has been exhibited internationally, including in Paris (the Pompidou Centre), St. Petersburg, Kyoto and Shanghai. |
| URL | https://mutatorvr.co.uk/goldsmiths/ |
| Description | FUSION Equipment • A Princeton Instruments spectrograph coupled to a frame transfer CCD camera (£47k) has been brought to operation by two of our CDT students; it is now being exploited on the upgraded York Linear Plasma Device by CDT student Hannah Willett to study physics of detached plasmas. York student Joe Branson has been exploiting the spectrograph to explore the H2 vibrational temperature through spectroscopy of Fulcher lines. • Two fast cameras for fusion plasma diagnostics (£40.7k capital fund, £8k from Durham University contribution to teaching lab): used as part of the Integrated Systems course which all our CDT students attend and now two students are using the cameras for their research: one on the TCV tokamak at EPFL (Lausanne) and one to re-commission the MAST-U tokamak coherence imaging system at CCFE. In 2016, in addition to using the Photron SA4 cameras in the taught course at Durham (April), one of them was used by Durham CDT student Joe Allcock to take coherence imaging data on the HL-2A tokamak at SWIP (Chengdu, China) in Jun/Jul, and one of them was used by York CDT student Hannah Willett to take data on the Linear Plasma Device at York and MAGPIE at ANU (Canberra, Australia). • EUV flat field grating and a back-thinned CCD detector (£49k) - a student has undertaken experiments relevant to warm dense matter using a similar camera on a laser system developed by Colorado State University which YPI is purchasing for projects including CDT activity. Another student is undertaking a detailed calibration study of the purchased CCD camera exposure response. A design study is under way to incorporate the CCD with the flat field grating into a spectrometer. • The triple grating spectrometer (cost £86,428) was delivered to the University of Liverpool in May 2015. The device was installed and set up in July 2015, which included training of Liverpool staff and a CDT student on its use. Since then the device has been set-up to measure Thomson scattering from a magnetised plasma source, a CDT PhD project. Initial testing of the device and arrangement is near completion. Additionally, the instrument will be demonstrated to the 2015 entry cohort of CDT students during the Plasma-Surface Interactions module that takes place in January 2016. The ICCD camera has been used as the detector for this system since March 2016. This experimental system is currently being used by CDT student Peter Ryan as part of his PhD research in the area of diagnostics for tokamak edge plasmas, centred on comparison of Thomson scattering measurements and Langmuir probe measurements in magnetised discharges. • The Arcast arc casting furnace (£60k) allows production of refractory alloys of interest for high temperature fusion applications. It was commissioned at Oxford in September 2015 and has so far been used on a CDT project to produce a tungsten-rhenium alloy to simulate a transmutation pathway composition. This sample is now being ion-implanted at CEA Saclay. In addition the system has been used by other students to produce master alloys for spray forming ODS-steels and melt spinning inter-metallic aluminium alloys. INTELLIGENT GAMES and GAME INTELLIGENCE Equipment The Brain Computer Interface equipment (Essex) is being used by Andrei Iacob (cohort 1, Essex) to understand the cognitive flow state of players to help give fine-grained online measures of player experience. As a result of his expertise, he took up a placement with Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe as part of his training in IGGI, and this is forming the basis of a longer-term relationship with the company. The eyetracking equipment (York) is being used by Joe Cutting (cohort 1, York) to examine cognitive load of game players through their pupil dilation. He has replicated some very early work by Kahneman using our modern equipment and found results that are both similar but also different in interesting ways. This replication is of relevance to Psychology even without its further application to Joe's specific research questions. The Robotic Games Lab (Essex) is currently set up for robotic car racing with AIs and Humans able to compete against each other. By crossing from the virtual to the real, this is an excellent way to test the robustness of AI algorithms that can inform both their use in games and in more challenging, high speed robotic environments. Rokas Volkovas (cohort 3, Essex) will use the lab as a development enviroment for his ideas on the co-evolution of general game-playing AI. The lab has also attracted public interest and Prof. Simon Lucas (IGGI PI at Essex) will talk on this at the New Scientist "Instant Expert" event in February 2017 (https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/new-scientist-events/) with an additional New Scientist Live talk planned for September 2017. New Scientist reported on the Robotic Games Lab on 4th January 2017 (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23331071-000-racing-robot-cars-will-help-ai-learn-to-adapt-to-the-real-world/). The Dedicated Processing Capacity, is heavily used by several of the students. Matt Bedder (cohort 1, York) is conducting very large scale experiments (billions of measurements) on Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) to explore in detail how to refine MCTS and hence lead to more scalable use of MCTS in commercial digital games, with interest and ongoing discussions with companies including Team17 and prowler.io. Piers Williams (cohort 1, Essex) is also using the servers to run experiments on MCTS in the games Hanabi and Ms PacMan as well as using the computing power to sweep a complete range of algorithm parameters to tune the algorithms for optimal performance. Christian Guckelsberger (cohort 1, Goldsmiths) has developed a new concept of empowerment to bridge between game features and player experience. His current theories of empowerment require extensive calculation for thousands of game states and the servers are allowing him to explore this concept within feasible timescales. Mihail Morosan (cohort 1, Essex) is using a distributed computing model to evaluate his evolutionary algorithms for StarCraft and Ms PacMan. By playing through complete games on as many clients as he can, he is able to evaluate the fitness of dozens of individuals in his evolving population simultaneously. Mihail estimates that the IGGI servers are providing a speeding up factor of 10 to 15 meaning that he can get useful results from overnight runs that might otherwise take a week. Joseph Walton-Rivers (cohort 1, Essex) has been using the Dedicated Processing Capacity facility extensively for research into using an MCTS-based predictive model for co-operative agents. Experiments that used to take two weeks to run can now be completed overnight. As a direct result of this, Joseph collected enough data to substantiate his approach and has had a paper accepted for the CEC conference in June (conference (IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computing http://www.cec2017.org/ ); Piers Williams (cohort 1, Essex) is a co-author. Daniel Berio (cohort 1, Goldsmiths) plans to use the servers to train memory and time intensive recurrent neural networks to generate human-like handwriting and graffiti. Other students have benefitted from being able to conduct smaller scale experiments. |
| Exploitation Route | FUSION Equipment • The upgrades to the York Linear Plasma Device (£37k) have enabled detached plasma regimes to be accessed by CDT student Hannah Willett. The access to the higher density plasmas that the CDT capital has enabled has also benefited CDT student Jakob Brunner who is trialling an FPGA based microwave interferometry system, and may support a third CDT student Jack Lovell in testing a Langmuir probe system that he is seeking to market to tokamaks in China and South Korea. • The Argon milling system (£99k) allows us to obtain ultrahigh-quality surface finish of advanced structural alloys that will be exposed to radiation damage in core components of nuclear reactors. The system was installed, commissioned and staff trained in the period of Feb-July 2015. Since then, we have used it on a CDT project to prepare vanadium-based alloys that the student is now characterising complementarily with high-resolution TEM at the Electron Microscopy Centre in Manchester and also at the SuperSTEM facility in Daresbury. In addition the system is being used by other students to prepare high-temperature nuclear alloys for ion irradiation at the Dalton Cumbrian Facility. A recently-started PhD student from the CDT, fully funded by CCFE, will use it extensively next year to prepare divertor-related CuCrZr materials that will be proton irradiated at DCF, and then transported as active material for characterisation at the active labs of the Materials Research Facility at CCFE, as part of the National Nuclear User Facility network. To further improve accessibility for students, the system was moved to the University of Manchester's large Electron Microscopy Centre in July 2017 where it is complemented by the existing precision ion polishing system. It is being used to provide high quality TEM and SEM specimens for a wide number of projects. Students from other CDT programmes including the Materials for Demanding Environments CDT, the Advanced Metallic Systems CDT and the Graphene NowNANO CDT have also benefitted from the use of this milling system. •An extreme ultra-violet (EUV) laser (funded by University of York, £155k) has been purchased. The new laser is being commissioned alongside primary diagnostics, including the back-thinned CCD detector and flat field grating (purchased with CDT equipment funding, £49k). The laser and camera are being developed into a system enabling measurement of warm dense plasma of relevance to inertial fusion research. To further improve accessibility for students, the system was moved to the University of Manchester's large Electron Microscopy Centre in July 2017 where it is complemented by the existing precision ion polishing system. It is being used to provide high quality TEM and SEM specimens for a wide number of projects. For example, it is being used in the production of fusion relevant tungsten and vanadium alloy samples, where it is essential to avoid irradiation damage being introduced as an artefact during preparation. Students from other CDT programmes including the Materials for Demanding Environments CDT, the Advanced Metallic Systems CDT and the Graphene NowNANO CDT have also benefitted from the use of this milling system.• The Arcast arc casting furnace (£60k) played a important role in the research of three Oxford CDT students, to make high entropy alloys and tungsten alloys. The furnace is also a key piece of equipment in a funded EPSRC grant spanning CDT partners Oxford and Manchester as well as external Sheffield. The arccast furnace has also been used to develop new high entropy alloys based on refractory metals for use in nuclear applications. For the first time alloy design strategies have been used to select low activation elements which are cast into billets. Ion irradiation has shown excellent resistance to irradiation hardening. The arccast allows for melting of refractory elements which is not possible with conventional furnaces. The ICCD camera (£42k) has been used in York by a CDT student to develop a novel Raman scattering system for measuring gas temperatures in partially ionised molecular plasmas for tokamak edge plasma applications. One of the Photron SA4 cameras has been installed by Durham CDT student Joe Allcock in a standalone Coherence Imaging System which will make flow measurements in the Super-X Divertor of the newly-upgraded MAST Upgrade tokamak during the coming campaign (Jan-Jun 2021). |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Energy,Healthcare,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Description | A CDT student visited the spin-out company XUV Lasers at Colorado State University to learn about their capillary discharge lasers and conduct research, where they received training. This led to an active collaboration between the company and the University, which is ongoing and has led to joint publications and the employment of the student by the company after their studies were completed. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2018 |
| Sector | Electronics,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology |
| Impact Types | Economic |
| Description | Fission and Aerospace |
| Organisation | University of Manchester |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Various |
| Collaborator Contribution | Various |
| Impact | None yet |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Fission and Aerospace |
| Organisation | University of Sheffield |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Various |
| Collaborator Contribution | Various |
| Impact | None yet |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Fission and Aerospace |
| Organisation | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Various |
| Collaborator Contribution | Various |
| Impact | None yet |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | XUV Lasers |
| Organisation | XUV Lasers |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | CDT student visited the spin-out company XUV Lasers at Colorado State University to learn about their capillary discharge lasers and conduct research |
| Collaborator Contribution | Training of CDT student in Capillary Discharge laser |
| Impact | Publications; CDT student subsequently employed by company |
| Start Year | 2018 |