EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) in Edinburgh

机器人将在未来二十年彻底改变世界经济和社会，为我们工作，在我们身边，与我们互动。英国迫切需要具备技术技能和行业意识的毕业生，以建立一条从学术研究到全球市场的创新管道。关键应用领域包括制造业、辅助和医疗机器人、海上能源、环境监测、搜索和救援、国防以及对人口老龄化的支持。机器人和自主系统领域在2013年被英国政府列为支撑英国就业和增长工业战略的八大技术之一。基本的挑战可以被描述为如何获得成功的互动。机器人必须与环境进行物理交互，这需要顺从的操作、主动感知、世界建模和规划。机器人必须相互作用，在多个分散的异构机器人系统之间做出协作决策，以完成复杂的任务。机器人必须在智能空间中与人交互，考虑到人类感知机制、共享控制、情感计算和自然多模态接口。机器人必须自省状态监测，预测和健康管理，以及长期持续的自主，包括验证和验证。最后，所有这些交互的成功取决于工程上的推动因素，包括架构系统设计、新颖的实施例、微和纳米传感器以及嵌入式多核计算。爱丁堡机器人与自主系统联盟（EDU-RAS）为博士培训中心（CDT）提供了一个理想的环境，以满足这些需求。赫瑞瓦特大学和爱丁堡大学结合了国际领先的科学和卓越的开发记录，以及世界一流的基础设施，最近获得了720万英镑的EPSRC和工业资本设备奖（ROBOTARIUM）。一批经验丰富的主管涵盖了自主交互的基础学科，包括机器人学习、现场机器人、拟人化和仿生设计、人机交互、嵌入式控制和传感系统、多智能体决策和规划以及多模式交互。CDT将实现以学生为中心的跨主题协作，寻求新的研究协同效应，以及开发和部署完整的机器人或自主系统。CDT将培养一群能够相互支持的学生，在问题和方法之间建立新的联系；有足够的共识，沟通容易，但能够借鉴彼此不同的，发展的，前沿的专业知识领域。CDT将利用一个完善的研究生培训计划，培养一个创新的四年制博士学位，授课课程包括基础理论和最新技术，以及与创造力、道德和创新等职业相关技能密切相关的研究培训。拟建的中心将具有很强的工业参与性；32个用户合作伙伴承诺提供900万英镑（240万英镑直接支持，660万英镑实物支持）；并参与包括外部顾问委员会的成员，指导和管理项目，围绕特定兴趣确定特定项目的范围，共同资助博士生，获得设备和软件，共同监督学生，学生实习，为硕士授课项目做出贡献，支持学生机器人比赛参赛，包括奖金，以及行业领先的商业技能培训。我们对该中心的愿景是成为一支重要的国际力量，能够在培养具有在现实世界中部署机器人和自主系统经验的创新准备的研究生方面实现代际飞跃。

Robots will revolutionise the world's economy and society over the next twenty years, working for us, beside us and interacting with us. The UK urgently needs graduates with the technical skills and industry awareness to create an innovation pipeline from academic research to global markets. Key application areas include manufacturing, assistive and medical robots, offshore energy, environmental monitoring, search and rescue, defence, and support for the aging population. The robotics and autonomous systems area has been highlighted by the UK Government in 2013 as one the 8 Great Technologies that underpin the UK's Industrial Strategy for jobs and growth. The essential challenge can be characterised as how to obtain successful INTERACTIONS. Robots must interact physically with environments, requiring compliant manipulation, active sensing, world modelling and planning. Robots must interact with each other, making collaborative decisions between multiple, decentralised, heterogeneous robotic systems to achieve complex tasks. Robots must interact with people in smart spaces, taking into account human perception mechanisms, shared control, affective computing and natural multi-modal interfaces.Robots must introspect for condition monitoring, prognostics and health management, and long term persistent autonomy including validation and verification. Finally, success in all these interactions depend on engineering enablers, including architectural system design, novel embodiment, micro and nano-sensors, and embedded multi-core computing.The Edinburgh alliance in Robotics and Autonomous Systems (EDU-RAS) provides an ideal environment for a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) to meet these needs. Heriot Watt University and the University of Edinburgh combine internationally leading science with an outstanding track record of exploitation, and world class infrastructure enhanced by a recent £7.2M EPSRC plus industry capital equipment award (ROBOTARIUM). A critical mass of experienced supervisors cover the underpinning disciplines crucial to autonomous interaction, including robot learning, field robotics, anthropomorphic & bio-inspired designs, human robot interaction, embedded control and sensing systems, multi-agent decision making and planning, and multimodal interaction. The CDT will enable student-centred collaboration across topic boundaries, seeking new research synergies as well as developing and fielding complete robotic or autonomous systems. A CDT will create cohort of students able to support each other in making novel connections between problems and methods; with sufficient shared understanding to communicate easily, but able to draw on each other's different, developing, areas of cutting-edge expertise. The CDT will draw on a well-established program in postgraduate training to create an innovative four year PhD, with taught courses on the underpinning theory and state of the art and research training closely linked to career relevant skills in creativity, ethics and innovation. The proposed centre will have a strong participative industrial presence; thirty two user partners have committed to £9M (£2.4M direct, £6.6M in kind) support; and to involvement including Membership of External Advisory Board to direct and govern the program, scoping particular projects around specific interests, co-funding of PhD studentships, access to equipment and software, co-supervision of students, student placements, contribution to MSc taught programs, support for student robot competition entries including prize money, and industry lead training on business skills.Our vision for the Centre is as a major international force that can make a generational leap in the training of innovation-ready postgraduates who are experienced in deployment of robotic and autonomous systems in the real world.