AAIP press release: A year in review 2019

News | Posted on Friday 31 January 2020

Collaboration is key to the success of the Programme and we have worked across the globe to join forces where needed. A real triumph of our partnerships is their multi-disciplinary nature: the safe introduction and adoption of robotics and autonomous systems is a complicated issue and we must work across disciplines to solve it.

Read the 2019 annual review

In 2019 we continued to grow the York team, welcoming new Research Associates to further our foundational research, and build on our existing expertise. We also invested an additional £1.2million of funding in new demonstrator projects, each addressing the challenges of assuring autonomous systems in their domain, while considering how we foster public trust in the technologies. Some demonstrator projects that began in 2018 are coming to an end and we look forward to sharing their results with you in 2020.

Programme Fellows have been a fantastic asset and we have welcomed ten new colleagues from six different countries to the scheme. Fellows bring new perspectives to our research, and provide insight that enhances and complements the work that we are doing. 

Collaboration is key to the success of the Programme and we have worked across the globe, through demonstrator projects, Programme Fellows, research, and membership of boards and networks, to join forces where needed.

A real triumph of our partnerships is their multi-disciplinary nature. We brought together lawyers, ethicists, philosophers, social scientists, clinicians, and others: the safe introduction and adoption of robotics and autonomous systems is a complicated issue and we must work across disciplines to solve it. This collaboration recently resulted in a paper in Elsevier's prestigious Artificial Intelligence journal, with more to come in 2020.

Over the year we established York as the leading centre of excellence for the safety assurance of robotics and autonomous systems. Our leadership in this area was strengthened with the announcement of significant Government funding through the UK Research Partnership and Innovation Fund. This funding, alongside corporate and philanthropic investment, will enable us to build a dedicated facility on the University of York campus and develop a £35million initiative that will bring together our work with other complementary expertise from the University, including robotics, advanced communications, and quantum technologies. 

We are using these achievements to build more momentum as we move into 2020, and we invite you to join us on the journey.

 

Professor John McDermid OBE FREng
Programme Director