Dexterous Robotics

Nathan Lepora is a Professor of Robotics & AI with interests in natural, artificial and embodied intelligence in robotics and neuroscience, including how to perceive, learn, interact, understand and manipulate our surroundings. He originally trained as a Mathematician at the University of Cambridge then changed fields to Biomimetic Robotics as a postdoc at the University of Sheffield. In 2014, he was appointed a Lecturer in Robotics in the Department of Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol, promoted to a Senior Lecturer in 2016, Reader in 2017 and Professor in 2019. He was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Leadership Award on ‘A Biomimetic Forebrain for Robot Touch’, a major investment (4 postdocs) in research on the interface of computational neuroscience, AI and robotics. This research has been covered extensively in the media, including the BBC News, the World Service, all major newspapers, Bloomberg, Science and many others. In 2022, he was awarded an Elektra Award for ‘University Research Project of the Year’ from a public vote of technology magazine readers. He is a co-investigator on the £5M ISCF Made Smarter Innovation Research Centre for ‘Smart, Collaborative Industrial Robotics’ and the £5M Horizon Europe project ‘Advancing the physical intelligence and performance of roBOTs towards human-like bi-manual objects MANipulation’. He also has a second career as a writer, focussing on science education, recently authoring ‘Robots!’ with Penguin House publishing.

Personal website

Staff webpage

Efi Psomopoulou is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Data Science at the University of Bristol and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. Her research vision is to create dexterous and safe robotic physical interactions with the environment or humans in unstructured scenarios. Her research combines control methods and machine learning techniques in applications that include human-to-robot object handovers, stable grasping and in-hand manipulation as well as variable-stiffness-joint robots and haptic feedback during minimally invasive surgery. 

Personal website

Antonia Tzemanaki is an Assistant Professor in Robotics at the University of Bristol and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. Taking inspiration from the human hand, its dexterity and sense of touch, her vision is to utilise robotic technologies to benefit the user and allow for inclusivity in our society, expanding on the many possibilities that they offer. Her research includes human and robot hands, hand exoskeletons, robot kinematics, haptics and wearable robotics, especially with applications in surgery, preventative medicine, rehabilitation, physiotherapy and dexterous tele-operation, as well as extreme environments such as nuclear and space industry. Since 2017, she has been leading on projects funded by Cancer Research UK, EPSRC and EU Horizon 2020.

Lab website 

Ben Ward-Cherrier is a Lecturer in Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the University of Bristol. His research aims to develop semi-autonomous prosthetics that integrate seamlessly with the human body. He develops neuromorphic hardware and spike-based algorithms with his team to embed intelligence within upper-limb prosthetic devices, while also exploring methods for invasive and non-invasive tactile feedback to the user. He currently holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship in “Shared Autonomy Neuroprosthetics: Bridging the Gap between Artificial and Biological Touch” and had a Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellowship at the University of Bristol.

University Profile

Dandan Zhang is a lecturer with the Department of Engineering Mathematics, University of Bristol, affiliated with Bristol Robotics Lab. She has cross-disciplinary interests in robotics and AI. She received the Ph.D. degree from the Computing Department, Imperial College London. She is now an honorable researcher at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London. Since she joined the University of Bristol, she has been working with the dexterous robotics group. Her main research focuses on 'intelligent robotics across scales'. She has been working on robot learning (imitation learning and reinforcement learning), human-robot interaction, micro-robotics, AI for science, Internet of Things, with applications in medical robotics, assistive robotics, and domestic robotics. She targets enhancing the level of autonomy for multi-scale robotics systems. The ultimate goal is to develop next-generation robots empowered by artificial general intelligence with super-human capabilities. She envisions that intelligent robots will reshape our world by providing tangible benefits in our daily life, contributing to the healthcare system. Her papers have been nominated for best paper awards in top-tier international robotics conferences, including ICRA and IROS. 

Personal Website