The UK landscape for robotics and autonomous systems

Robotics and Autonomous Systems Special Interest Group Report: Innovate UK - Technology Strategy Board This landscape collates the output from a series of workshops designed to explore the impact on the UK of advances in Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS). In overviewing the resulting landscape it is clear that the RAS opportunity, as perceived by the UK community, is extensive and rich and that the UK has the potential to create a strong RAS market. It is also clear that robotics and autonomous systems will impact on each UK market sector and that the total size of this impact will be significantly greater than the size of the RAS sector itself. Across these sectors strong cross cutting themes exist that can be used to drive synergies to build technical capability and market opportunity. Within those sectors that will benefit the most from robotics and autonomous systems technology the potential for disruptive innovation and the need to respond to change through the development of new business models is now obvious. Robotics and autonomous systems do not work in isolation. They will require testing, regulation, standards, innovation, investment and skills together with technical progress and strong collaborative partnerships in order to fully realise the opportunity. The resulting Landscape carries an essential message; that the UK has a unique opportunity to engage with robotics and autonomous systems, to exploit existing expertise within the UK and explore its potential, but that other nations are similarly engaged and the UK must now be bold and invest to win. 41 Individuals listed as contributor

Meeting sustainable development goals via robotics and autonomous systems

Robotics and autonomous systems are reshaping the world, changing healthcare, food production and biodiversity management. While they will play a fundamental role in delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goals, associated opportunities and threats are yet to be considered systematically. We report on a horizon scan evaluating robotics and autonomous systems impact on all Sustainable Development Goals, involving 102 experts from around the world. Robotics and autonomous systems are likely to transform how the Sustainable Development Goals are achieved, through replacing and supporting human activities, fostering innovation, enhancing remote access and improving monitoring. Emerging threats relate to reinforcing inequalities, exacerbating environmental change, diverting resources from tried-and-tested solutions and reducing freedom and privacy through inadequate governance. Although predicting future impacts of robotics and autonomous systems on the Sustainable Development Goals is difficult, thoroughly examining technological developments early is essential to prevent unintended detrimental consequences. Additionally, robotics and autonomous systems should be considered explicitly when developing future iterations of the Sustainable Development Goals to avoid reversing progress or exacerbating inequalities

Meeting sustainable development goals via robotics and autonomous systems

Robotics and autonomous systems are reshaping the world, changing healthcare, food production and biodiversity management. While they will play a fundamental role in delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goals, associated opportunities and threats are yet to be considered systematically. We report on a horizon scan evaluating robotics and autonomous systems impact on all Sustainable Development Goals, involving 102 experts from around the world. Robotics and autonomous systems are likely to transform how the Sustainable Development Goals are achieved, through replacing and supporting human activities, fostering innovation, enhancing remote access and improving monitoring. Emerging threats relate to reinforcing inequalities, exacerbating environmental change, diverting resources from tried-and-tested solutions and reducing freedom and privacy through inadequate governance. Although predicting future impacts of robotics and autonomous systems on the Sustainable Development Goals is difficult, thoroughly examining technological developments early is essential to prevent unintended detrimental consequences. Additionally, robotics and autonomous systems should be considered explicitly when developing future iterations of the Sustainable Development Goals to avoid reversing progress or exacerbating inequalities

Hierarchical reinforcement learning as creative problem solving

publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Hierarchical reinforcement learning as creative problem solving journaltitle: Robotics and Autonomous Systems articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2016.08.021 content_type: article copyright: © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Cybersecurity of Robotics and Autonomous Systems: Privacy and Safety

Robots and autonomous systems in general are set to suffer similar cybersecurity problems that computers have been facing for decades. This is not only worrying for critical tasks such as those performed by surgical, or military robots but also for household robots such as vacuum cleaners or for teleconference robots compromise privacy and safety of their owners. What will happen if these robots are hacked? This study presents a survey on the cybersecurity attacks associated with service robots, and as a result, a taxonomy that classifies the risks faced by users when using service robots, distinguishing between security and safety threads, is presented. We also present the robot software development phase as one the most relevant ones for the security of robots

#UKRAS22: The 5th UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems Conference

© 2022 EPSRC UK-Robotics and Autonomous Systems (UK-RAS) Network. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, to view a copy of the license, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/As chairs of the UKRAS 2022 conference, we are happy to welcome you in person after a break from in-person events. The theme of this year’s conference is “Robotics for Unconstrained Environments”, reflecting much of the robotics research that happens at Aberystwyth University. Unconstrained environments include any indoor and outdoor environment that has not been modified specifically for the robot to perform its task. The premise is that the environment must be representative of the task rather than being artificially simplified

#UKRAS21: The 4th UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems Conference

© The Author(s) / UK-RAS Network. This is an open access conference paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This year’s theme focuses on robotics at home. We haveidentified three focus areas to examine robotics and au-tonomous systems within our call for papers that are eachcovered by an inspiring keynote and four oral presentationsfrom authors of accepted papers: The focus area robotics foruse in the home considers aspects of rapid prototyping, safety,assisted living, rehabilitation robotics, technology acceptance,and diverse user groups. Keynote speaker Prof. Ana Paiva (In-stituto Superior T´ecnico, University of Lisbon and coordinatorof GAIPS at INESC-ID) will talk about the engineering ofsociality and collaboration between humans and robots. The oral paper presentations in this area are Exploring Human-Dog Attachment Behaviours and their Translation to a Roboti

Update NPS / January 2021

USMC Commandant, Senior Leaders Commend Fall Quarter Graduates; USMC Assistant Commandant Explores Emerging Concepts at NPS; Developing the Defensive Playbook Against Large-Scale Drone Swarms; CRUSER Funds FY21 Robotics and Autonomous Systems Researc

An overview of robotics and autonomous systems for harsh environments

Across a wide range of industries and applications, robotics and autonomous systems can fulfil the crucial and challenging tasks such as inspection, exploration, monitoring, drilling, sampling and mapping in areas of scientific discovery, disaster prevention, human rescue and infrastructure management, etc. However, in many situations, the associated environment is either too dangerous or inaccessible to humans. Hence, a wide range of robots have been developed and deployed to replace or aid humans in these activities. A look at these harsh environment applications of robotics demonstrate the diversity of technologies developed. This paper reviews some key application areas of robotics that involve interactions with harsh environments (such as search and rescue, space exploration, and deep-sea operations), gives an overview of the developed technologies and provides a discussion of the key trends and future directions common to many of these areas

Meeting sustainable development goals via robotics and autonomous systems

Robotics and autonomous systems are reshaping the world, changing healthcare, food production and biodiversity management. While they will play a fundamental role in delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goals, associated opportunities and threats are yet to be considered systematically. We report on a horizon scan evaluating robotics and autonomous systems impact on all Sustainable Development Goals, involving 102 experts from around the world. Robotics and autonomous systems are likely to transform how the Sustainable Development Goals are achieved, through replacing and supporting human activities, fostering innovation, enhancing remote access and improving monitoring. Emerging threats relate to reinforcing inequalities, exacerbating environmental change, diverting resources from tried-and-tested solutions and reducing freedom and privacy through inadequate governance. Although predicting future impacts of robotics and autonomous systems on the Sustainable Development Goals is difficult, thoroughly examining technological developments early is essential to prevent unintended detrimental consequences. Additionally, robotics and autonomous systems should be considered explicitly when developing future iterations of the Sustainable Development Goals to avoid reversing progress or exacerbating inequalities