Swarm Robotics
Public Engagement
Director of the UWE Science Communication Unit
EPSRC Senior Media Fellow
Associate Dean Faculty of Environment and Technology University of the West of England, Bristol Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY UK Phone: +44 117 328 2211 Fax: +44 117 328 2734 Email: Alan.Winfield@uwe.ac.uk
Welcome to my home page. I'm an engineer and academic at UWE Bristol, and I conduct research in mobile robotics within the Bristol Robotics Lab.
I am deeply interested in mobile robots for two reasons: (1), they are complex and potentially useful machines that embody just about every design challenge and discipline there is and (2), robots allow us to address some deep questions about life, emergence, culture and intelligence in a radically new way, that is by building models. Thus, robotics is for me both engineering and experimental philosophy.
I'm committed to the widest possible dissemination of research and ideas in science, engineering and technology and I believe that robots provide us with a wonderful vehicle for public engagement. Actually I would go a stage further and argue that intelligent robots will become ubiquitous in the near future and we therefore need to start a dialogue now about the ethical and moral questions that will arise.
Biological Metaphors and Crisis
CoSMoS
Swarm Foraging Symbrion Public Engagement
Robotic Visions
Walking with Robots PE training
Walking with Robots blog posts
Publications (html/pdf) Research students
Walking with Robots wins Academy Award
9 July, talk at Broadlands School,
Bristol
Recent publications
Winfield AFT, Liu W and Bjerknes JD, 'Functional and Reliability Modelling of Swarm Robotic Systems', pp 56-79 in Symbiotic Multi-robot Organisms, Eds. P Levi and S Kernbach, Springer-Verlag, 2010.
Winfield AFT and Griffiths F, 'Towards the Emergence of Artificial Culture in Collective Robot Systems', pp 431-439 in Symbiotic Multi-robot Organisms, Eds. P Levi and S Kernbach, Springer-Verlag, 2010.
Winfield AFT, 'You really need to know what your bot(s) are thinking about you', pp 201-208 in Close Engagements with Artificial Companions: Key Social, Psychological, Ethical and Design Issues, Ed. Y Wilks, John Benjamins, 2010.