UCL Computer Science robotics research takes computing technologies to new places. Places where people can’t go. Radioactive environments and inaccessible landscapes. Or inside human bodies, where a surgeon’s hands can’t reach without causing trauma.
Combining robotics with advances in machine learning and AI technologies, we’re finding new ways to build, to travel, to farm, and to extend life-changing operations to patients who were previously considered too young, old or sick for treatment. We’re making robots for neurosurgery, construction, manufacturing, agriculture.
And these are just the first indicators of what’s going to be possible.
What kind of robotics are we working on at UCL Computer Science?
Surgical robotics
Robots can enhance the dexterity of skilled surgeons, and help them make better decisions during operations.
Our scientists are now developing robotic tools, for example, that allow surgeons to remove tumour tissue via the nasal passage from hard-to-reach cancers in the brain and spine, simplifying surgery and improving patient outcomes. This next-generation technology, developed by UCL Computer Science spinout business Panda Surgical, went from bench to bedside in under a year.
Disability innovation and assistive technology
The ability of robots to interact with different environments – and the people within them – opens up all kinds of new possibilities for assistive technology.
Through our Global Disability Innovation Hub, people with disabilities are working with UCL Computer Science roboticists to co-design products like Crowdbot.
The technology means people with disabilities can now make their way more easily through crowds, thanks to a shared control wheelchair navigation system. Crowdbot blends user intention signals (from the wheelchair’s joystick) with sensor data to create probabilistic route plans that predict the trajectories of nearby humans on a virtual map.
Autonomous search and rescue, agriculture and construction
Thanks to UCL Computer Science’s research strengths in data science and machine learning, our four-legged and two-legged robots can now go further and faster – more independently than ever before.
UKRI-funded projects like RoboHike have introduced high-level perception and learning approaches, to create robots that can act independently on our behalf in construction, industrial inspection and operations, agriculture and autonomous search and rescue in disaster zones.
Our researchers are helping us understand more about the sensory input robots need to reliably move around. The result of this work? Less data processing and hardware needed on projects, leading to cost efficiencies and more equitable access to these emerging technologies.
Robot skins, touch and dexterity
Robots are powerful and precise. But ultimately, we also need them to handle objects with humanlike levels of sensitivity and dexterity.
Under the ARIA Robot Dexterity programme, UCL Computer Science are developing solutions like MagTecSkin – a novel, stretchable electronic skin that gives robots a three-dimensional sense of touch using magnetic technology. With these enhanced tactile capabilities, we can build robots that can tackle a much wider range of difficult, delicate and demanding tasks.
Robotic safety evaluation and assessment
Next-generation robotics need to be built in a safe, ethical and sustainable way. Our work with a broad mix of policy makers, industry partners and academic institutions, helps ensure our robots meet the safety requirements of the heavily regulated industries (like healthcare and transportation) they serve.
UCL-partnered initiatives like the IDEAL Robotics Colloquium are key to these efforts, producing the consensus and frameworks needed to evaluate the potential introduction and consequences of robots to surgical procedures and settings.
Elsewhere, the Global Disability Innovation Hub is overseeing the data and evidence cluster, drawn from engagement with 34 million people in 61 countries, to shape recommendations for assistive technology investment.
What’s coming next?
These projects are laying the foundations for technologies that will ultimately change many aspects of our lives. Robotics is already extending the reach and abilities of humans, enabling us to perform complex and dangerous physical tasks with consistency and precision.
Embodied AI will soon allow the artificial intelligences our society will increasingly rely upon to sense, experience and understand the physical world as we do – keeping human experience at the core of future technologies.
Through our research, our programmes and our partnerships, UCL Computer Science is already helping to power that progress.
