News

On the 21st of February, we were invited by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to showcase our pioneering work on magnetic guided capsule robots, alongside other Sonopill team members, at the historic Royal Society in central London. The aim of the event, entitled “Science for a Successful Nation,” was to demonstrate the importance…

16 February 2018. Pietro Valdastri was invited to give the talk “Lifesaving Capsule Robots” at the University of Toronto, within the Distinguished Seminar Series of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. During the visit, Pietro had a chance to visit several great research labs, including Jim Drake’s Lab at SickKids Hospital (picture below) and…

2 March 2018. We have been awarded the Best Student Paper Award at the International Symposium on Medical Robotics 2018 for the work “A Disposable Continuum Endoscope Using Piston-driven Parallel Bellow Actuator” by N. Garbin, L. Wang, J. Chandler, K. L. Obstein, N. Simaan, P. Valdastri. The paper describes a ultra-low-cost solution for gastric cancer screening…

In late January and early February 2018, a team of six University of Leeds academics embarked on a week long trip to Asia to enhance their understanding of the needs of people with disabilities in India and China. The trip was funded by the UK Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund with a view to informing…

University of Leeds researcher Luis Figueredo won a prestigious Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship for a project that will enable humans and robot collaborate on forceful interaction tasks. Dr Figueredo explains his project: “In this project, I will develop a robotic planning and control system that performs human-robot collaborative manipulation tasks. The system will enable robots to…

Leeds researchers have been awarded £300K by EPSRC to build robots that can reason about physics like humans. How do you grasp a bottle of milk, nestling behind some yoghurt pots, within a cluttered fridge? Whilst humans are able to use visual information to plan and select such skilled actions with external objects with great…

Thursday 18th January saw Robotics researchers from across the University of Leeds campus come together to learn more about the inspiring work being carried out by post-graduate students. Almost 20 students gave flash presentations to a strict 3 minute time limit with prizes for the best presentation as voted for by attendees. An additional prize…

The Robots for Resilient Infrastructure Robotic Challenge Event took place on 27 to 28 June at Weetwood Hall, Leeds, as part of the UK Robotics Week 2017, to showcase the current state-of-the-art of robotics for infrastructure through a packed programme of talks and demonstrations. The event brought together over 80 academics, industry, policy makers and…

Ten of the most advanced infrastructure robots and systems currrently in development will be put to the test later this month at the UK Robotics Week Resilient Infrastructure Challenge event in Leeds.

A prototype robotic sleeve, which can wrap around a weak heart before synchronising with its natural motion to help it keep beating, has been developed by an international team of engineers.