ROBOTS ROAMING CAMPUS

BY DANIELGORDON-POTTS

ROBOTS WILL SOON be roaming the gleaming hallways of the £35 million Institute for Safe Autonomy (ISA) on University of York’s Campus East.

ISA department director Miles Elsden tells me this as he generously gives me a tour of the impressive new setup ahead of its official opening set for spring next year. Designed and purpose built to be a ‘living lab’ for Robots, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Communication and more (as well as a few human researchers), this exciting development is set to be the UK’s first dedicated safe autonomy research centre.

From the moment you walk through the door, the space is smart, professional, glassy and spacious, and soon going to be a thriving hub full of researchers, industry experts, and global leaders – all focused on one of the most important issues of our time: ensuring that the technology we make is safe, and works for the good of society. meeting rooms and offices on one side of the building, then labs and active collaborative research spac es on the other, this impressive new structure is far bigger than it looks from be used as a landing pad for drone testing), this place promises to be a dynamic and exciting new place on campus.

Miles tells Vision that most of the doors are automatic – “so they can be opened by robots.” He then proceeds to introduce us to the only just moved in since the space was completed over the summer. The testing pool, he tells Vision, still hasn’t had its acoustic tiles put on yet – he shows me the empty pool, a few meters square in width and depth. It will soon be used for underwater communication and underwater robotics research. pool, and even a telescope on the roof (the same roof that will also able, most of the researchers have

Intelligence, to solve real world challenges.

I’m shown into another room, where remarkable self-program ming, self-building, ‘evolving’ robots are being made, or rather, making themselves through Artificial