Adam A. Stokes
Welcome to my personal webpage, where you’ll find a collection of essays on topics I’m actively trying to understand. These are not static publications but live documents that evolve over time as I think in public, refine my views, and respond to new ideas and conversations. If you wish to discuss anything I’ve written, or wish to engage with me on a project or a talk, then please contact me. My primary email address is a.a.stokes@ed.ac.uk.I am Full Professor and Head of the Institute for Bioengineering at the University of Edinburgh and a research-led advisor on robotics, AI, and bioinspired innovation. Outside of the academy I am an active entrepreneur and consultant. I work with organisations to stress-test assumptions about emerging technologies and chart practical paths from prototype to deployment. These essays capture the thinking behind that work—I offer them as a public resource and also as an invitation to collaborate.
My most recent post is shown below, see all essays here.
The Future of Robotics Does not Belong to Roboticists
I delivered the opening plenary talk at RoboSoft 2024 with this provocation: “The future of robotics does not belong to roboticists". My talk provided my personal reflections and insights into the progression, potential, and intricacies of soft-robotics. In keeping with the central theme of the 2024 conference I placed particular emphasis on the use of bioinspired and fluidic technologies in the context of exploration. A central feature of my talk was the use of a list of “propositions”; a technique that is widely used in The Netherlands, but rarely used elsewhere. I really appreciate the concision of a list of propositions, they provide succinct and definitive statements which describe the central thesis and learnings from a body of work. Before delivering my talk I distributed print-outs of the propositions to the audience, so they were aware of the structure and so that they had a physical copy of the key points. You can download the PDF of my handout here. In this live essay I...