Tuesday 19th October 2021

'Empowered Human Co-existence with Cobots & Soft Robots' 

The Real Time Club is delighted to continue its programme of dinners with our distinguished guest speaker Professor Thrishantha Nanayakkara of Imperial College London who will address us on the topic of

'Empowered Human Co-existence with Cobots & Soft Robots'

The soft robotics market is growing roughly at 35% CAGR. These robots together with COBOTS (collaborative robots) are expected to transform many industries including agriculture, food, and hospitality.

In this talk, I will show some of the recent results to discuss how soft robots have been useful for us to understand some secrets behind how humans and other animals deal with uncertain natural environments.

I will also speculate some future breakthroughs that can disrupt the way the human society will be empowered by robots and other intelligent consumer goods.

I will conclude with some remarks on the need for broad collaboration among robotics, economics, policy, and human experience design communities to create opportunities for broad communities who would otherwise be marginalised.

About our speaker this evening: Professor Thrishantha Nanayakkara, Imperial College London

Professor Thrishantha Nanayakkara is the director of the Morphlab, Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London.

He is also the present speaker of the Imperial Robotics Forum consisting of 44 Robotics Principal Investigators, and one of the three directors of the UK RAS Strategic task group for soft robotics.

His research interests are in taking a soft robotics approach to understand the nature of the shared computation between the nervous system and the physical body of biological beings.

He has research experience at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, and MIT before moving to UK. He has published more than 150 peer reviewed papers in flagship robotics journals and conferences.

He is in the editorial board of Scientific Reports in Nature Publishing Group, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Frontiers Mechatronics, and Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics.

For more details, please visit: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/morph-lab

For over 53 years the RTC has been gathering...

...an eclectic mix of entrepreneurs, technologists, civil servants, lawyers, journalists, activists, academics, politicians and artists to meet and debate the science and technology issues of the day.

Over time we have evolved a format for our evenings:

6:00 to 7:00 Networking Drinks

7:00 Introductions, greetings and housekeeping

7:15 Three course dinner

8:30 to 9:30 Speech

10:30 -ish Carriages.

We will operate under current Covid-19 recommended procedures for sizeable gatherings such as this at the National Liberal Club.

We operate under the Chatham House Rule, in that diners may use what they learn but not cite how or when they learned it, to encourage a lively conversation both during the speech and over dinner.

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely fool proof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” - Douglas Adams

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Looking forward to seeing you! Here's to learning more and an inspiring evening of new information to pique our curiosity, robust debate, and enthralling conversations.

All good wishes,

Dr John L Collins

Chair, Real Time Club

Social Distancing: We will be subject to the Social Distancing and other Covid-19 restrictions and guidelines defined by Government and the National Liberal Club

Dress code: The dress code for this event at the National Liberal Club is casual business attire

Dietary Requirements: Please contact the organiser with any specific dietary requirements at least 5 days before the event

Ticket sales end two working days before the dinner due to National Liberal Club logistics.

Refund Policy: Refunds are only made at the discretion of the organiser and where agreed will be made to the buyer within 14 days of the request being confirmed by the organiser. The ticket buyer shall request a refund directly from the event organiser by email to secretary@realtimeclub.co.uk under the following terms: Refund requested up to 21 clear days before the day the event is due to take place: refund due 100% of total ticket cost minus a £7.50 administration fee. Refund requested between 20 and 14 clear days before the day the event is due to take place: 75% of total ticket cost minus a £7.50 administration fee. Refund requested between 13 and 4 clear days before the day the event is due to take place: 50% of total ticket cost minus a £7.50 administration fee. No refund will be made for requests made after that date.