About Walking with Robots
What is a Robot? What do we want robots to do in the future? What can they do now? Can robots have personalities? Can a fully-functional conscious robot be developed? If so, would it be human? And should it have rights?
Walking with Robots is a three-year programme of public events funded by the EPSRC that aims to address these questions and more.
There are many misconceptions about what intelligent robots are and what they can do. The Walking with Robots network brings key intelligent robotics researchers together with leading science communicators to promote a wider public engagement with the reality of contemporary robotics research and with the people who do that research. The network comprehensively covers what we believe to be the most exciting areas of intelligent robotics research in the UK, including artificial consciousness, bio mimetic (animal-like) robots, evolutionary and adaptive robots, climbing and walking robots, space and planetary robotics, swarm robotics and socially interactive robots.
This network will take robots into schools, science centres and public spaces; it will bring school children and adults into robot labs and workshops. Working across the extraordinary range of robotics research, from space exploration to artificial consciousness, we can reach out and inspire audiences with innovative ideas that could change their lives. Our intention is to increase awareness, especially amongst the young, of where robotics research is heading and how they can themselves contribute, either as engineers or as informed citizens making choices about the world they wish to live in.
Walking with Robots is led by the Universities of the West of England, Bristol, Essex and Sheffield, and is coordinated from the Science Communication Unit (formerly Graphic Science) at UWE, Bristol.