This text is replaced by the Flash content.
Search
Menu
Research
Seminars
People
Resources
For students
Contact
 
Home

The Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems is part of the School of Computing, Communications and Electronics of the University of Plymouth. The centre houses a multidisciplinary group with interests in cognitive systems and robotics and their constituent technologies. The group has strong national and international links with both industry and other research institutes.

News

  • Our robotic wheelchair has been exhibited in Amsterdam from December 2009 to March 2010. See a Youtube video.
  • A recent report, commissioned by the HSBC, predicts that Plymouth will become a Robotics hub in the future business landscape of the UK. Guido Bugmann and Merslin Systems were asked to comment on the news for an article in the Herald on 30 May 2009.
  • 40 PhD studentships available at the University of Plymouth. Details and application forms here. To apply for a studentship in Robotics, specify the research area (in the form) as "Computer Science / Robotics" and Priority subject category as "3. Creative economies and Design technologies". Deadline for receiving the applications: 26 May 2009 at 12:00. - now closed-

  • Two bursaries for attenting TAROS'09 in Londonderry. See VRC website.

  • PhD studentship available: Deadline: 22.04.2009 Click HERE for the advertisement.

  • The new £192,000 CONCEPT project, funded by the EPSRC, will study how robots can learn the meaning of words through interaction with humans and how robots can then transfer those meaning over a network. We are looking for two motivated PhD students to join us on this project.

  • The Robot Football Team of the University of Plymouth took part in EUROBY'2008 with a newly developped humanoid robot.
     EUROBY08
    • The Plymouth robot did particularly well in sprint, beating the world record holder in the first out of three races (see YouTube).This was due to the development of a novel dynamic gait. The team produced a spectacular penalty kick applauded by other competitors and the crowd. However, due to the robot still being in a development stage, Plymouth did not enter all competitions and finished 5th in the overall contest. I should be noted that Plymouth was the only European team competing in the Hurosot category, making England the de-facto European Hurosot Champion.
    • The team comprised Dr Guido Bugmann, Reader in Intelligent Systems, Peter Gibbons, PhD student in Robotics, Axel Voitier, Gregory Skaltsas and Thomas Tsimos, 3 students from the MSc Robotics conducting projects on humanoid robotics. The team also benefited from the ground work done towards previous competitions by PhD student Joerg Wolf, lecturer Paul Robinson and Phil Hall, a private contributor. Our technical support teams in electronics and mechanics played a key role. 
    • The BBC and Reuters provided world-wide coverage of the event, e.g. ITN.   
  • Studentship advertized on "It’s in the eye: Bio-mimetic robotic cognitive processing" (position now filled)  
  • The ITALK: Integration and Transfer of Action Language and Knowledge has started on 1 March 2008. ITALK is an Integrated Project of the 7th Framework Programme of the EU. It involves universities from Italy, Denmark, Germany and the UK. The University of Plymouth, with Angelo Cangelosi and Tony Belpaeme, coordinates ITALK.



  • The Virtual Research Centre for Personal Robotics has been funded by the EPSRC. This 3 year project aims at strenghening UK research in an area of high predicted growth. The VRC is open to all interested UK researchers. PhD students are welcome. Inquiries to Guido Bugmann

  • The Symposium on Language and Robots, Aveiro, Portugal, 10-12 December 2007 is co-organised by Tony Belpaeme. 

  • Plymouth took part in the humanoid robot competition in the RoboGames 2007 in San Francisco (video from the BBC). The team finished 10 out of 15, a good result for a first participation of a European team in this league.

     
  • Plymouth is 2007 UK Robot Footbal Champion (press release and BBC Radio Devon interview with Joerg Wolf).

        
  • Final year BSc students make visually guided robots, using only hardware see video (WMV, 5MB) or high-res video (MPG, 15MB).


  • Three PhD positions are available at the centre: one on imitation of intentional behavior in artificial agents, one on vision-based manipulation of fabric in domestic environments and one on natural language training for robot football. Deadline for applying is 21 June 2006.   
  • Plymouth is 2006 UK Champion in Robot Football (see BBC news). As in 2005, the final was again between the universities of Plymouth and Warwick - which Plymouth won convincingly 5-0. Steve Rackham (final year BEng) has entered the Brunel 200 celebrations competition. Carlton television are filming the whole competition, which is between universities in the region. Steve's project is an in-car driver alertness monitor using a web-camera and some advanced machine vision software to recognise the driver's face, locate the eyes and assess it they are open or closed. If closed for a period whilst in 'drive' pose, the system sounds an alarm. We wish Steve good luck with his project in the competition, which will be broadcast at 7.30pm on Thursday 20th April in ITV.


  • Peter White had a conversation with the ER1 robot (using Nuance's speech recognition engine) at the Open Day on 18 Feb. 2006.

  •  The Robot Club meetings started, every Wednesday at 4pm in Smeaton 003 and 004. Build your own robot project with the of technical and academic staff, or just drop in and have a chat with other robot enthousiasts!   
  • In a Robotics and Autonomous Systems journal article we report on research on robots imitating humans. The research was a joint effort between RIS and the Artificial Intelligence Lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. See Jansen, B. and Belpaeme, T. (2005) A computational model of intention reading in imitation. Robotics and Autonomous Systems. 

  • John Eastment has just finished a new buggy compatible with the LEGO buggy.   
  • Tony Belpaeme will present a tutorial on modelling the evolution of language at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in August and at the European Conference on Artificial Life in September. More information is available on the IJCAI tutorial and on the ECAL05 tutorial.   
  • The UK 7 versus 7 RobotFootbal Team just beat Croatia (13 - 1).

Where to find RIS people?

  • IROS'08 Workshop on Home Robotics - WHR 2008 26 Sept. 1008, Nice, France 
  • HRI'08: ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 12-15 March 2008, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
  • TAROS'07: Towards Autonomous Robotics Systems, 3-5 September 2007, Aberystwyth, Wales.
  • RO-MAN'06: 15th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication , Hatfield, 6-8 Sept 2006
  • FIRA RoboWorld Cup 2006: Dortmund, Germany, 30 June - 1 Jult 2006.
  • Alife X: 10th conference on Artificial Life, Bloomington, IN, USA, 3-7 June 2006.
  • IJCAI 2005. International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 30 July-5 August 2005, Edinburgh, UK.
  • ECAL 2005. European Conference on Artificial Life, 5-9 September 2005, Canterbury, UK.
  • TAROS 2005. Towards autonomous robotics systems, 12-14 September 2005, Imperial College London, UK.
  • CIRAS 2005 and FIRA Cup 2005. Computational Intelligence, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, and FIRA Roboworld Cup 2005, 10-16 December 2005, Singapore.