Dejanira Araiza-Illan is a post-doctoral Research Assistant in verification of autonomous systems at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Bristol and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. She holds a BSc in Mechatronics (Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico City) and a PhD in Automatic Control and Systems Engineering (University of Sheffield). She currently works in the EPSRC projects ”Robust Integrated Verification of Autonomous Systems” and ”Trustworthy Robotic Assistants”. Her research interests include, besides verification and validation techniques for autonomous systems and human-robot interactions, biologically inspired control systems for autonomy, and robotic control systems.
Clare Dixon is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, and member of the Centre for Autonomous Systems Technology, at the University of Liverpool. She is well known for her work on automated reasoning methods for non-classical logics including temporal proof and model checking. She has applied formal verification to autonomous robotic assistants and robot swarms, winning a best paper award at Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS) 2014 conference for this work. She is a member of the Steering committee for the Temporal Representation and Reasoning International Symposium Series, the Organising Committee for the UK Workshop on Automated Reasoning (chair 2004-2009), and was programme co-chair of the TAROS 2015 conference.
Kerstin Eder is a Reader in Design Automation and Verification at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Bristol. She set up the Energy Aware COmputing (EACO) initiative and leads the Verification and Validation for Safety in Robots research theme at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory.
Her research is focused on specification, verification and analysis techniques which allow engineers to design a system and to verify/explore its behaviour in terms of functional correctness, performance and energy efficiency. Kerstin has gained extensive expertise in verifying complex microelectronic designs at leading semiconductor design and EDA companies. She seeks novel combinations of formal methods with state-of-the-art simulation/test-based approaches to achieve solutions that make a difference in practice.
Her most recent work includes Coverage-Driven Verification for robots that directly interact with humans, using assertion checks and theorem proving to verify control system designs, energy modelling of software and static analysis to predict energy consumption of programs. She is particularly interested in safety assurance for learning machines.
Kerstin has co-authored over 50 internationally refereed publications, was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering "Excellence in Engineering" prize and manages a portfolio of active research grants valued in excess of £1.7M. She is currently Principal Investigator on the EPSRC projects "Robust Integrated Verification of Autonomous Systems" and "Trustworthy Robotic Assistants". Kerstin holds a PhD in Computational Logic, an MSc in Artificial Intelligence and an MEng in Informatics.
Michael Fisher is Professor of Computer Science and Director of the multi-disciplinary Centre for Autonomous Systems Technology at the University of Liverpool.
His research particularly concerns practical temporal proof, formal verification, and autonomous systems, with recent work including developing an automated verification system for agent programs, hybrid agent architectures for autonomous satellites, formal verification for use in the certification of autonomous unmanned air systems, and the formal verification of swarm robotics.
He serves on the editorial boards of both the Journal of Applied Logic and the Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, and is a corner editor for the Journal of Logic and Computation. He is a Fellow of both the BCS and the IET, is a member of the British Standards Institute's committee on "Robots and Robotic Devices", and is currently Principal Investigator on the EPSRC projects "Reconfigurable Autonomy", "Verifiable Autonomy", and "Trustworthy Robotic Assistants". He also leads the UK Network on the Verification and Validation of Autonomous Systems, again funded by EPSRC: http://cgi.csc.liv.ac.uk/~michael/VaVAS
Dr Hongyang Qu is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Automatic Control & Systems Engineering (ACSE), University of Sheffield. Before joining ACSE in 2013, Hongyang had been a computer scientist for a decade, having completed his BSc (Beijing Institute of Technology, 1995), MSc (Chinese Academy of Science, 2001) and PhD (University of Warwick, 2006) studies in Computer Science. As a post-doctoral researcher, he spent one and a half years at Université de Provence, two years at Imperial College London, and four years at Oxford University. During this time he developed many model checking techniques and software. He is the lead developer of the Model Checker for Multi-Agent Systems (MCMAS) and a major contributor to the development of the well-known probabilistic model checker PRISM.
Sandor M Veres is a professor of Autonomous Control Systems at the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at the University of Sheffield. He director of the Autonomous Systems and Robotics Research Group within the Department, and an executive group member of Sheffield Robotics. Between 2002 and 2012 he was professor of control systems at Southampton University, School of Engineering Sciences. His main current interests are in software architectures for intelligent machines, reconfigurable autonomy, distributed sensing, control and decision making and also verifiable, certifiable autonomy. He has published 4 books and over 200 refereed papers on a variety of topics in control sciences.
Tony Pipe is Deputy Director of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. He obtained his PhD qualification in 1997, became a Reader in 2006, and has been a full Professor of Robotics and Autonomous Systems since 2010. Tony Pipe has 25 years of experience in carrying out research on advanced sensor-systems, medical robotics, biologically-inspired robotics, machine learning and adaptive behaviour, applied to intelligent and distributed control/monitoring systems for robotics. His current research foci are: autonomous road vehicle technology; innovative medical technology; safe physical Human Robot Interaction for robots co-located with humans; self- healing VLSI electronic hardware for safety-critical applications; modelling animal brain signal processing and control structures. He has co-authored over 200 internationally reviewed publications.
Alan Winfield is Professor of Electronic Engineering and Director of the Science Communication Unit at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, UK, and Visiting Professor at the University of York. He received his PhD in Digital Communications from the University of Hull in 1984, then co-founded and led APD Communications Ltd until taking-up appointment at UWE, Bristol in 1991. Winfield co-founded the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and his current research is focussed on the science, engineering and ethics of robot intelligence.
He is a member of the editorial boards of Swarm Intelligence and the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, and an associate editor of Evolutionary Robotics.
Winfield is passionate about communicating research and ideas in science, engineering and technology, and was awarded a Senior Media Fellowship in 2009. Winfield led UK-wide public engagement project Walking with Robots, awarded the 2010 Royal Academy of Engineering Rooke medal for public promotion of engineering. His latest book Robotics: A Very Short Introduction, was published by Oxford University Press in September 2012, and he blogs about robots, open science and related topics at http://alanwinfield.blogspot.com/
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