Upcoming Events
14th June 2017
Jobeda Ali, CEO of Three Sisters Care and Rich Walker, MD of Shadow Robot Company will be speaking at TechXLR8 in the Excel centre (13th – 15th June). Rich will hope to be discussing and demonstrating smart grasping systems and Jobeda will be talking about CHIRON and robots in the care sector. Not to be missed! For more information, please see here.
24th – 30th June 2017
UK Robotics Week. There will be a range of events held around the country. CHIRON will be officially launching the CHIRON Care Robotics Art Challenge at an event during the week held at Bristol Robotics Laboratory (date TBC).
29th November 2017
AI Tech World is taking place on the 29th November 2017 Olympia, London. One of our project leads, Jobeda Ali, will be speaking at a panel discussion on “Machine Learning in Healthcare” http://www.aitechworld.net/
12th December 2017
One of our consortium project leads, Richard Curry of SH&BA, is organising “Robots for Better Care” at Royal Society of Medicine.
More upcoming events organised by CHIRON in 2017 will be listed here soon!
Past events
11th May 2017
Our project lead, Nigel Harris of Designability, will be speaking at Neighbourhoods of the Future: The Shape of Things to Come (10th & 11th May). This is an event supported by Innovate UK & KTN and will be held at Natwest bank headquarters in London. Tickets are free, and available here.
Robots vs Humanity – 1st December 2016 – Google Campus
Dr Elena Touroni of The Chelsea Psychology Clinic, London answers the question ‘Is it robots or is it humanity that wins?’
When: 1st December
Time: 7pm – 10pm
Place: Google Campus, 5 Bonhill St, London EC2A 4BX
Tickets: Sold out (For press pass please email )
Should robots have faces? Can you fall in love with a robot? Will assistive technology help us thrive in old age? Will robots rule the future? Join robot engineers, inventors, psychologists and entrepreneurs as they discuss some of these questions.
With talks from professors of robotics, psychology and experts in the field, come along to Google Campus on Thursday 1st December to explore the future of robots, assistive technology and humanity. There will also be a visit from the Emotion Robotics robots!
Confirmed Speakers & Panel include:
Dr Praminda Caleb-Solly, Bristol Robotics Laboratory
Dr Praminda Caleb-Solly is an Associate Professor in Independent Living Systems in the Faculty of Environment and Technology at the University of the West of England. She is team leader for Assisted Living at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and Head of Electronics and Computer Systems at Designability. She has over 15 years of teaching and research experience working on externally funded projects with partners from a diverse range of commercial and industrial enterprise. Her multi-disciplinary background, underpinned by degrees in Electronic Systems Engineering, Biomedical Instrumentation Engineering and a PhD in Computer Science, enable her to address technical issues in relation to human experience of technology.
Kathleen Richardson, Director of the Campaign Against Sex Robots
Kathleen Richardson is Senior Research Fellow in Ethics of Robotics and part of the Europe-wide DREAM project (Development of Robot-Enhance Therapy for Children with AutisM). Kathleen completed her PhD at the Department of Anthropology, University of Cambridge. In 2013, she was part of the Digital Bridges Project, an innovative AHRC funded technology and arts collaboration between Watford Palace Theatre and the University of Cambridge. Kathleen is author of An Anthropology of Robots and AI: Annihilation Anxiety and Machines. In 2015 she, along with her colleague launched the Campaign Against Sex Robots to draw attention to problematic effects on new technologies on human relations, and their potential impact to create new layers of inequalities between men and women and adults and children.
Professor Guang-Zhong Yang, PhD, FREng , Faculty of Engineering, Department of Computing, Imperial
Professor Guang-Zhong Yang, PhD, FREng is Director and Co-founder of the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, Deputy Chairman of the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London, UK. Professor Yang also holds a number of key academic positions at Imperial – he is Director and Founder of the Royal Society/Wolfson Medical Image Computing Laboratory, co-founder of the Wolfson Surgical Technology Laboratory, Chairman of the Centre for Pervasive Sensing.
Dr Tom Pennybacker, Consultant Psychiatrist, The Chelsea Psychology Clinic
Dr Tom Pennybacker is a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist working in the NHS and private sector. In the NHS he is clinical lead for a team delivering complex psychiatric and psychological care to people with severe mental disorders. He has extensive experience of assessing and treating minor and severe psychiatric problems with medications and psychotherapy.
He qualified as a doctor in 1999 and worked in physical health for a number of years before specialising in psychiatry. Alongside his training as a psychiatrist he has undertaken an in-depth training in psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic and developed a specialist expertise in combining psychological interventions with medication.
Dr Pennybacker has a lead role in teaching medical students and psychiatrists in his NHS Trust and at University College London. He is involved in research projects developing understanding of how the brain functions in mental disorder and was previously the Assistant Editor of the journal Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.
Dr. Elena Touroni, Consultant Psychologist, Clinic Director, The Chelsea Psychology Clinic
Dr. Elena Touroni is a skilled and experienced Consultant Psychologist with a track record of delivering high-quality services for individuals with all common emotional difficulties and those with a diagnosis of personality disorder.
Having obtained a first degree in Psychology (BSc) at the American College of Greece, she completed her doctoral training at the University of Surrey. Dr. Touroni is highly experienced in the assessment and treatment of depression, anxiety, substance misuse, personality disorder, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, adjustment disorder and relationship difficulties.
Dr. Touroni has held a variety of clinical and managerial positions including her current one as Head of Service in an NHS Trust. Further she has held academic positions for the University of Surrey and the Institute of Mental Health lecturing on specialist postgraduate Masters and Doctorate programmes.
As well as holding a variety of NHS positions, Dr. Touroni is the co-founder of a private practice in Central London that has been a provider of psychological therapy for all common emotional difficulties including personality disorder since 2002. She is now the founder and director of The Chelsea Psychology Clinic.
Patrick Levy Rosenthal, Founder & CEO at Emoshape – Architect of the Emotion Processing Unit for AI and Robots
Patrick Levy-Rosenthal is the founder and CEO of Emoshape LLC a US based company who currently lives between London and New York. He grew up in Paris. In 2006 Patrick won the European Information Society Technology (IST) prize for his work on a 3D interactive screen. He moved to London in 2009 to work on his passion and ideas surrounding bio inspired emotion synthesis. He studied the relationship between cognition and emotion, the root of the cognitive processes underlying each emotional responses, emotions synthesis and the influence of emotion on decision making. Patrick has developed a new generation of microchip named EPU (Emotion Processing Unit) for Ai and Robots and the world’s first Al that can feel the 12 primary human emotion.
Dr Richard Graham, Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist
Dr Richard Graham is a Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist and former Clinical Director of the Adolescent Department at the Tavistock Clinic (https://tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/). For the last decade his work has centred on the impact of technology on development, recently exploring the influence of connected devices, social media, apps and video games on adolescents and younger children. He is also passionate about the use of technology to promote wellness.
In 2009 he contributed to the development of the award-winning online mental health platform Big White Wall (http://www.bigwhitewall.com), and continues to work there as Clinical Director, and was part of the ‘Facebook for Good’ project. In June 2016 he was appointed the Executive Board of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS is the British Government’s principal advisory body for online safety and security for children and young people.)
Most recently, he was honoured to be appointed as Clinical Lead to the London Digital Mental Well-being Service (http://www.digitalwellbeing.london/) which aims to support more Londoners in the way they want support. He blogs regularly for the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/dr-richard-graham) and the BMJ.
Hosts:
Rich Walker, Managing Director of Shadow Robot Company
Rich Walker is the Managing Director of Shadow Robot Company. He has a BA in Mathematics and a Diploma in Computer Science from Cambridge University. He has spent years working in robotics, and now leads the team at Shadow who are developing new robots and new applications for robotics. He is active in developing and implementing European (FP7 and now Horizon 2020) and Innovate UK projects and always happy to discuss possible projects and proposal ideas.
Rich is on the Innovate UK “Robotics and Autonomous Systems” SIG Advisory Board, as well as several EPSRC robotics advisory boards and management committees.
Sinéad Nolan, Research and Communications Officer, CHIRON & Three Sisters Care
Sinéad Nolan has a BA in Creative Writing and an MA in Newspaper Journalism (NCTJ accredited) from Nottingham Trent University. Prior to working on the CHIRON project, she wrote features for some of the biggest selling publications in Ireland and the UK including the Sunday World, Irish Independent, Worksop Guardian, Irish Daily Mail, Best, The Lady magazine and the careers website Totaljobs.com. As a fiction writer, she was shortlisted for the Momaya Press Awards 2015 and 2014, and the Francis McManus Short Story Competition 2006 and has been published in the Incubator literary journal. Having a passion for people, as well as writing, she is currently studying part time to become a qualified counsellor – on the back of this she accrues weekly hours as a volunteer counsellor in bereavement and post-natal depression charities.
Agenda
7.00 – 7.30 Find a seat, meet the robots or network.
7.30 – 8.30 Talks from the experts
8.30 – 9.10 Open panel debate between the experts and questions from the audience
9.10 – 10.00 Networking, free drinks and snacks, spend some time with the robots!
For press tickets please email