Keynote Speaker - 2026
Keynote Speaker - 2026
Embedded Files
Professor Emma Hart FRSE
Associate Dean for Research and Innovation
School of Computing, Engineering & the Built Environment
Merchiston Campus, Room, C54
Edinburgh Napier University
Machines designing Machines: Generative Approaches to the Autonomous Design of Robots
Abstract
Robot design is traditionally the domain of humans–engineers, physicists, and increasingly AI experts. Advances in generative AI techniques such as Evolutionary Computation and Large Language models are now accelerating the ability to automate the design of both static objects (such as bridge) and of robots, including their body shape and brain (control system). If the latter is coupled with advances in materials, 3d printing, autonomous manufacturing and assembly techniques, it becomes possible to full automate the design and fabrication of robots, i.e. enables machines to design machines.
I will give a short history the use of AI to design robots, and show case the current state of the art, based on some the recent work from my group. Finally, I will touch on some ethical issues associated with the notion of autonomous robot design, and discuss the potential of artificial evolution and generative AI techniques to be used as a tool to gain new insights into biological evolving systems.
Biosketch of the speaker:
Professor Emma Hart has worked in the field of Evolutionary Computing for over 20 years on a range of applications ranging from combinatorial optimisation to robotics, where the latter includes robot design and swarm robotics. Her current work is mainly centred in Evolutionary Robotics, bringing together ideas on using artificial evolution as tool for optimisation with research that focuses on how robots can be made to continually learn, improving performance as they gather information from their own or other robots’ experiences. The work has attracted significant media attention including recently in the New Scientist, and the Guardian. She gave a TED talk on this subject at TEDWomen in December 2021 in Palm Springs, USA which has attracted over 1 million views since being released online in April 2022. She was the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Evolutionary Computation (MIT Press) and an elected member of the ACM SIG on Evolutionary Computing until 2023. In 2022, she was honoured to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for her contributions to the field of Computational Intelligence.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse