News – Page 3 – UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Functionality

Recycling materials in soft robotics

Posted on August 10, 2022 by Katie Drury

It’s important for all fields to consider their environmental impact, and robotics doesn’t currently have a rich history of research into sustainability. In this recent paper Professor Rossiter, Dr Partridge and Dr Manzini, from our TAS Functionality Node, demonstrate their research into reducing the waste for soft robotics.

The need for soft bodies and actuators in this field leads to the use of large amounts of silicon, rubber and other elastomers, which isn’t normally recycled. In the paper the authors present a non-chemical process to recycle and reuse these elastomeric materials, which, as well as decreasing the amount the harmful waste, has the extra benefits of minimising the amount of new material needed and lowering costs. The material from old and broken soft actuators was ground into granules ranging from 1mm in diameter to 3mm in diameter and used to create new soft actuators without loss of function. Characterisation tests showed that although some functionality reduced with the percentage of recycled material, the silicone composites exhibited very comparable elastic properties to the pristine silicone.

The authors propose that these materials could then form a pipeline where every time they’re recycled they’re used in lower and lower risk applications. This technique could also help other fields reduce their waste.

Watch this short video to see the research in action:

Access the full paper: ReRobot: Recycled Materials for Trustworthy Soft Robots

And please do leave a comment – we’d love to hear from you!

Robot Hackathon

Posted on July 27, 2022July 27, 2022 by miranda.addey

In June this year the universities of York, Manchester and Sheffield hosted a hackathon – a competition designed to collaboratively solve a problem in a particular field. The competing teams were a mix of undergraduates, postgraduates and post-doctoral researchers. The goal of the competition was to produce some code that would allow a single operator to control a group of 5 robots. The TAS functionality node was represented at the event by Dr Sabine Hauert and Dr James Wilson.

Over the three days attendees heard from an expert panel discussing key challenges around swarm robotics, which included Dr Hauert, and helped develop solutions for remotely operating robot swarms, using Pi-puck and MONA robots. On the final day teams made presentations, with prizes for the best solutions.

The competition involved the robots moving around a small arena and gathering in locations (generated virtually) to score points. The locations themselves were labelled from 1-5, which was the amount of robots you needed gathered there in order to gain points. Most of the devised solutions involved control over a single agent with others following along autonomously, though some groups put together fully autonomous solutions. Some groups were even able to run code on swarms remotely at other universities which was fun!

Thanks to the universities, organisers, hosts and speakers for a brilliant time.

Autonomous vehicle testing using game engines

Posted on July 19, 2022 by miranda.addey

We’re excited to announce the recent publication by some members of our team, Professor Kerstin Eder and Dr Greg Chance of the Trustworthy Systems Laboratory (https://www.bristol.ac.uk/tsl), of research into the determinism of game engines used for simulation-based autonomous vehicle verification. These simulations are useful in developing control systems and test environments for the vehicles; but only if they behave deterministically, and therefore yield reliable and repeatable results. Unfortunately, this isn’t a characteristic of game engines and they often produce different outcomes for the same initial conditions. The paper, published in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, presents the causes and effects of this non-deterministic behaviour, and sets forth a case study showing the shortcomings of a particular simulator, and a methodology to assess and minimize simulation precision. To read the paper please go here:  On Determinism of Game Engines Used for Simulation-Based Autonomous Vehicle Verification

Participants wanted for SWARM study

Posted on May 27, 2022July 2, 2022 by matimba.swana

Would you like to help with research on the regulation of what future AI-driven nanomedicines should look like? If so, we are looking for volunteers to discuss ethical and regulatory issues of using AI driven cancer therapies with swarm behaviour through a series of interviews.

The research is part of the SWARM study – Small robots With collective behaviour as AI-driven cancer therapies; building Regulations for future nanoMedicines.

We are looking for:

Oncology healthcare professionals
Cancer patients
Regulatory or policymakers in drug delivery/oncology
Nanomedicine researcher or developers

Volunteers must be over the age of 18 years old to take part. We would love to hear from you. You can find out more about the study on our SWARM study webpage or by contacting Matimba Swana at matimba.swana@bristol.ac.uk.

If you would like to take part please complete this Expression of Interest Form.

Participants wanted for ethics study

Posted on August 13, 2021January 19, 2022 by nicwoodhall

Would you like to help in some research on the ethics of robots? If so, we are looking for volunteers to discuss ethical issues around robots and autonomous systems that are capable of learning from their surroundings and changing what they do.

The research is part of the ARET: Adaptable Robots, Ethics, and Trust study. In old English ‘aret’ means ‘to ‘entrust’, and ‘arête’ is a term used by Ancient Greek philosophers to indicate moral virtue or excellence.

If you are aged 18 or over, we would love to hear from you. You do not need to have any previous knowledge of autonomous systems to participate as we will show you images and videos to introduce you to the technologies.

You can find out more about the study on our ARET: Adaptable Robots, Ethics, and Trust study webpage or by contacting Arianna Manzini at arianna.manzini@bristol.ac.uk.

If you would like to take part please complete this volunteer form.

Powering emergency food distribution using swarms: Results from the DOTS competition are in

Posted on July 2, 2021January 19, 2022 by nicwoodhall

Find out how robots called DOTS (Distributed Organisation and Transport Systems) were used to help simulate the distribution of emergency food parcels in a competition run jointly by the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Toshiba Bristol Research and Innovation Laboratory and the South Gloucestershire Council’s UMBRELLA project.

Increases in the number of emergency food parcels distributed by food banks have accelerated over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly in those going to children. Robot swarms could help streamline the distribution of these emergency food parcels, while freeing up time for volunteers and workers to interface with the users and provide human contact.

Read about how participants in the competition brainstormed and engineered solutions to tackle the challenge and watch their simulations on the RoboHub website.