51³Ô¹ÏÍø

With just a week to go until this year's 51³Ô¹ÏÍø Festival, final preparations are underway to launch the UK's largest robotics network at the event.

I-Cub was a popular attraction at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø Festival 2013

The Robotics Network will bring together all the basic and applied robotics research being carried out by 51³Ô¹ÏÍø researchers. The network involves more than 15 separate groups from the departments of aeronautics, bioengineering, computing, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. The research areas include: mechatronics systems design and control; autonomous systems and artificial intelligence; medical and rehabilitation robotics; computer vision; neuromechanics, and social robotics.

A talk, The Future of Robotics, will launch the new network at 5pm on Friday 9 May and there will be a series of café talks running across both days of the Festival.

Bio-inspired jumping robot developed by Dr Mirko Kovac

To mark this exciting development, a dedicated Robot Zone has been created for the first time at the Festival. The zone is a place where you can explore all the incredible research being carried out at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø. You can speak with scientists who are using robotics to tackle a wide range of real-world issues:

• Improving rehabilitation rates in children with motor development issues and physical injuries
• Developing virtual reality surgical devices to enable operations to be conducted remotely
• Working on robotic muscles that have the power to lift a human being

Dr Jenna Stevens-Smith, from 51³Ô¹ÏÍø’s Department of Bioengineering, said: “It is very exciting to be launching the Robotics Network at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø Festival. I think Festival visitors will be fascinated to see all the ways that robots can make a difference to the way we live – often in the most unexpected ways.”