One of the most influential figureheads in the field, Ron has been recognised for his work and was appointed an OBE. In 1998, he was appointed as one of the five UK members of the binational Channel Tunnel Safety Authority which is a post he held for 13 years. He chairs one of the two IEC working groups responsible for IEC 61508 (the international standard dealing with safety critical systems). A post which he has held from 1987. In 2005, he received the IEC 1906 Award for his work on functional safety and IEC 61508. He held a 3-year appointment (2015-2018) as a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor at Liverpool John Moores University.
Prof. Davide Brugali graduated in Electronic Engineering at Politecnico di Milano in 1994; he received the PhD in Computer Science from Politecnico di Torino in 1998. Since 2001 he is Assistant Professor at University of Bergamo. He has been visiting researcher at the CMU Robotics Institute in 1997 and visiting professor at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2006. Since 2000 he is Co-Chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on “Software Engineering for Robotics and Automation”. He served as guest editor of the IEEE Transactions on R&A (2002), IEEE R&A Magazine (2009), and of a Springer STAR book on “Software Engineering for Experimental Robotics” (2006). He is main author of the book “Software Development – Case Studies in Java” published by Addison-Wesley in 2005. His main publications can be found in the IEEE Transactions on R&A, ACM Communications, ACM Computing Surveys.
Sebastian G. Brunner is a researcher at the Department of Cognitive Robotics at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics of the German Aerospace Center. He received his Master’s degree in Computer Science with major subject Artificial Intelligence and Robotics from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany in 2014. His current research interest lies in the field of mobile robotics with the focus on task programming and (transformational) planning, semantic knowledge representation and reasoning, and semantic task logging and raw-data auto-labeling.
Ana Cavalcanti is Professor of Software Verification at York and Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies working on Software Engineering for Robotics: modelling, validation, simulation, and testing. She held a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award and a Royal Society Industry Fellowship to work with QinetiQ in avionics. She has chaired the PC of various well-established international conferences, is on the editorial board of four international journals, and is Chair of the board of the FME Association. She is, and has been, PI on several large research grants. Her current research is on theory and practice of verification and testing for robotics.
Kerstin Eder is Professor of Computer Science and leads the Trustworthy Systems Laboratory at the University of Bristol, as well as 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 to verify or explore a system’s behaviour in terms of functional correctness, safety, 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 robotic systems that directly interact with humans, intelligent test generation techniques, energy modelling of software and static analysis to predict the energy consumption of programs. She holds a PhD in Computational Logic, an MSc in Artificial Intelligence and an MEng in Informatics. In 2007 she was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering “Excellence in Engineering” prize.
Gusz Eiben is professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam where he leads the Computational Intelligence Group, and a visiting professor at the University of York, UK. His research lies in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life, Adaptive Collective Systems. His approach to AI is based on Evolutionary Computing and over the last 30+ years he has worked on a diverse set of topics. He worked in the theoretical foundations and applications in health, finance, and traffic management, built a system to evolve Mondriaan and Escher style art and exhibited it in the Haags Gemeentemuseum, researched how artificial societies can emerge in the computer through evolution and learning, invented and tested reproduction mechanisms that use more than two parents, studied how evolutionary processes can be (self-)calibrated, and lately he is active in Evolutionary Robotics.
Michael Fisher is Professor of Computer Science and Director of the multi-disciplinary Centre for Autonomous Systems Technology at the University of Liverpool. He holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies on the theme of “Responsible Autonomous Systems”.
His research particularly concerns formal verification, temporal logic, and autonomous systems, with recent work including developing an automated verification system for agent programs, hybrid agent architectures for robotic systems, formal verification for use in the certification of autonomous systems, and safety and ethics in autonomous 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 “Robotics” standards committee, and is a member of the IEEE’s “Failsafe Design for Autonomous Systems” standards committee. He is involved in a range of EPSRC projects across robotics for hazardous environments and sensor network analysis, leads the UK Network on the Verification and Validation of Autonomous Systems, and is co-chair of the IEEE’s newly formed Technical Committee on the Verification of Autonomous Systems.
Arnaud Gotlieb, Chief Research Scientist/Research Professor at Simula Research Laboratory in Norway, is an expert on the application of Artificial Intelligence to the validation of software-intensive systems, cyber-physical systems including industrial robotics and autonomous systems. Dr. Gotlieb has co-authored more than 120 publications in Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering and developed several tools for testing critical software systems. He was the scientific coordinator of the French ANR-CAVERN project (2008-2011) for Inria, led the Research-Based Innovation Center Certus dedicated to Software Validation and Verification (2011-2019) at Simula. He was recently awarded with the prestigious RCN FRINATEK grant for the T-LARGO project on testing learning robots (2018-2022). He leads the industrial pilots experiments of the H2020 AI4EU Project (2019-2022). Dr. Gotlieb has served in many PCs including IJCAI, AAAI, CP, ICSE-SEIP, ICST, ISSRE, co-chaired the scientific program of QSIC 2013, the SEIP track of ICSE 2014, the “Testing and Verification” track of CP from 2016 to 2019. He co-chaired the first IEEE Artificial Intelligence Testing Conference in April 2019.
Ibrahim Habli is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York. His research interests are in the design and assurance of safety-critical systems, with a particular focus on intelligent systems (e.g. autonomous and connected driving) and Digital Health (e.g. ePrescribing and self-management apps). In 2015, he was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Fellowship through which he collaborated with the NHS on evidence-based means for assuring the safety of digital health systems.
Ibrahim’s work is highly interdisciplinary, with active collaborative links with clinicians, health scientists, economists and ethicists. His research is empirical and industry-informed, with collaborative projects with organisations such as Rolls-Royce, NASA, Jaguar Land Rover and NHS Digital. Ibrahim is an academic lead on the Assuring Autonomy International Programme, a £12 million initiative funded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation and the University of York. He has been a member of several international and national safety standardisation committees (e.g. DO178C, MISRA and BSI). Ibrahim mainly teaches on York’s postgraduate programmes in Safety-Critical Systems Engineering and supervises several PhD students (including practising engineers).
Rob Hierons received a BA in Mathematics (Trinity College, Cambridge), and a Ph.D. in Computer Science (Brunel University). He then joined the Department of Mathematical and Computing Sciences at Goldsmiths College, University of London, before returning to Brunel University in 2000. He was promoted to full Professor in 2003 and joined The University of Sheffield in 2018.
His research largely concerns the automated generation of efficient, systematic test suites on the basis of program code, models or specifications. He is joint Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Software Testing, Verification, and Reliability (STVR) and is a member of the editorial boards of The Computer Journal and Formal Aspects of Computing.
Félix Ingrand is a tenured researcher at CNRS. After his PhD from University of Grenoble (1987), he spent four years at SRI International (Menlo park, CA) where he worked on procedural reasoning. He joined the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Group at CNRS/LAAS in 1991. His work deals with architecture for autonomous system with an emphasis on the decisional aspect. He has done some work on procedural reasoning, as well as on action planning and plans execution control. He has been invited to NASA Ames Research Center for a year to work on various robotics platforms (K9 and Gromit) to study the use of the LAAS architecture and tools on those platforms, as well as to conduct research on the development of a temporal planner/execution control system based on the IDEA/Europa planner. More recently, he worked on extending the LAAS Architecture toward formal approaches to perform validation, verification, and correct controller synthesis. This work is being conducted in various past and current projects: AMAES (ANR), MARAE (FNRAE), GOAC (ESA), CPSE Labs (H2020), AI4EU (H2020), etc.
Prof. Mark Lawford is the Chair of McMaster University’s Department of Computing and Software and the Director of the McMaster Centre for Software Certification. He has a B.Sc.(‘89) in Engineering Mathematics from Queen’s University, Kingston, where he received the University Medal in Engineering Mathematics. His M.A.Sc.(‘92) and Ph.D. (‘97) are from the Systems Control Group in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. He worked at Ontario Hydro as a real-time software verification consultant on the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station Shutdown Systems Redesign project, receiving the Ontario Hydro New Technology Award for Automation of Systematic Design Verification of Safety Critical Software in 1999. He joined McMaster University’s Department of Computing and Software in 1998 where he helped to develop the Software Engineering programs and Mechatronics Engineering programs. Since 2012 he has been involved in automotive software research and in 2014 he was a co-recipient of a Chrysler Innovation Aware. He is currently the lead investigator or co-investigator on a number of projects with several OEMs and serves as the Connected and Autonomous Vehicle faculty advisor for the McMaster EcoCAR team. He serves of the steering committee of the Software Certification Consortium (SCC). His research interests include software engineering, software certification, application of formal methods to safety critical real-time systems, and supervisory control of discrete event systems. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in the province of Ontario and a Senior Member of the IEEE.
Pippa worked for GEC-Marconi Avionics prior to joining the UK CAA. Whilst with this organisation she worked on the development of a range of safety critical flight control computers in both the military and civil fields.
She has been a Design Surveyor with the CAA since 1996, specialising in airborne software, airborne electronic hardware and safety assessment. In that time Pippa has worked as a CAA, JAA & EASA systems specialist on civil aircraft certification projects such as the Boeing 737 and 767, A330/340 and A380. Pippa has also worked on numerous engine certification and validation projects.
Additionally, Pippa has worked the regulatory authority teams for several UAS programmes and undertaken research into aviation safety topics that have directly changed aircraft safety regulations.
Pippa has spent the last three years as the technical lead for the CAA’s Cyber Oversight Programme.
Patrizio Pelliccione is an Associate Professor at DISIM - University of L’Aquila and an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Chalmers \| University of Gothenburg. He got his PhD in 2005 at the University of L’Aquila (Italy) and from February 1, 2014 he is Docent in Software Engineering, title given by the University of Gothenburg. His research topics are mainly in software engineering, software architectures modelling and verification, autonomous systems, and formal methods. He has co-authored more than 120 publications in journals and international conferences and workshops in these topics. He has been on the program committees for several top conferences, he is a reviewer for top journals in the software engineering domain, and he organized as program chair international conferences like ICSA2017 and FormaliSE 2018. He is very active in European and National projects. He is the PI for Co4Robots H2020 EU project for the University of Gothenburg. In his research activity he has collaborated with several industries such as Volvo Cars, Volvo AB, Ericsson, Jeppesen, Axis communication, Systemite AB, Thales Italia, Selex Marconi telecommunications, Siemens, Saab, TERMA, etc. More information is available at http://www.patriziopelliccione.com.
Zeyn Saigol is a Principal Technologist with the Connected Places Catapult, specialising in verification, validation and regulatory approval of autonomous vehicles (AVs). He’s technical lead for the MUSICC project, which is a key pillar of the Department for Transport’s contribution to multinational AV certification. MUISCC has defined a representation format for AV test scenarios, and has created an open, online repository for storing and managing such scenarios. Zeyn is also interface architect on the VeriCAV project, which is creating a smart simulation testing framework, and is a member of ISO and ASAM committees working on standards for AV testing.
His background includes a BSc in physics from the University of Bristol, master’s degrees from Imperial College and the University of Edinburgh, and a PhD in AI from the University of Birmingham. His research interests covered planning under uncertainty, knowledge representation, mapping, path planning, and machine learning. He’s worked with a variety of autonomous systems including wheeled, flying, and marine robots, in roles spanning academia and industry.
Technical Lead of the EU H2020 RobMoSys project. Elected coordinator of the euRobotics Topic Group on Software Engineering, System Integration, System Engineering. Co-Founder and Associate Editor of the open access journal JOSER – Journal of Software Engineering for Robotics. Co-Organizer of the series of International Workshop on Domain-Specific Languages and Models for Robotics Systems (DSLRob). Head of the service robotics research group at Technische Hochschule Ulm, Professor for Real Time Systems and Autonomous Systems in the Computer Science Department of Technische Hochschule Ulm since 2004. Co-opted member of the Faculty of Engineering, Computer Science and Psychology of the University of Ulm. Diploma and PhD in Computer Science in 1993 and 2004, respectively.
Robert Skilton is Head of Cybernetics and Lead Technologist at RACE, a UK centre for Remote Applications in Challenging Environments, where he leads a team specialising in control systems, autonomy, and perception for robotic operation and inspection in hazardous environments. Robert graduated with an MSc in Cybernetics in 2011, and is currently studying for a PhD in Autonomous Robotics and Machine Learning at the Surrey Technology for Autonomous systems and Robotics (STAR) Lab. Robert is a Chartered Engineer, brings experience in developing robotic systems for hazardous environments and has developed numerous robotic and software platforms for use in nuclear and other extreme environments. Robert has experience from a wide range of roles on industrial engineering and R&D projects including in telerobotics, and is currently leading various related activities including the Robotics and AI in Nuclear (RAIN) work on teleoperation of industrial robots.
Alan Winfield is Professor of Robot Ethics at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, UK, Visiting Professor at the University of York, and Associate Fellow of the Cambridge Centre for the Future of Intelligence. 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 1992. Winfield co-founded the Bristol Robotics Laboratory where his research is focused on the science and engineering of cognitive robotics; current projects are focused on robots with simulation-based internal models and multi-robot systems in critical environments.
Winfield is passionate about communicating research and ideas in science, engineering and technology; he led UK-wide public engagement project Walking with Robots, awarded the 2010 Royal Academy of Engineering Rooke medal for public promotion of engineering. Until recently he was director of UWE’s Science Communication Unit. Winfield is frequently called upon by the press and media to comment on developments in AI and robotics; he was a guest on the BBC R4 series The Life Scientific and more recently interviewed for BBC News HARDtalk.
Winfield is an advocate for robot ethics; he sits on the executive of the IEEE Standards Association Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, and chairs Working Group P7001, drafting a new IEEE standard on Transparency of Autonomous Systems. He has recently been appointed a member of the World Economic Forum Global AI Council. Winfield has published over 240 works, including Robotics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2012); he lectures widely on robotics, presenting to both academic and public audiences, and blogs at http://alanwinfield.blogspot.com/
Jim Woodcock is Professor of Software Engineering at the University of York, known for his research, teaching, and consultancy in the application of industrial-scale software engineering and formal methods. He is a Chartered Engineer, a fellow of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, and a member of the London Mathematical Society. His current research is in modelling and reasoning about uncertainty in robotic applications.
