I am the Founder and Director of The Soft Systems Group which is part of the Institute for Integrated Micro and Nano Systems in The School of Engineering at The University of Edinburgh. We use a wide range of bioinspired engineering approaches to tackle the most challenging issues faced by society.
The group has an ever growing range of interests including: bioinspired engineering, sensors, robotics, microfluidics, micro/nano fabrication, wearable technology, diagnostics, bioelectronics, and metamaterials.
I have a multidisciplinary background (engineering, biology, and chemistry) and this is reflected in the composition of my group and the direction of our research. Our current research has three main thrusts: robotics, fluidics, and complex systems; and I built the research group around a central theme of Bioinspired Engineering, I have published over 150 research articles in journals and conferences, and our papers are gaining over 830 citations per year.
My research focusses on abstracting principles from nature and using these guidelines to invent and build new types of robots, and systems that deliver real-world benefit in a range of societally important application areas. Example systems that I have developed have applications in offshore energy (The ORCA Hub), nuclear decommissioning (Connect-R, Innovate UK), and medical devices (CSO 3D-PPE and neuroprosthetics). In 2020 my group’s research was recognised with the Principal’s Award for Innovation for our work on “Soft Systems for Hard Problems”.
Towards Resident Robots: I was part of the core team, and Challenge Lead for Cyber Physical Fabric, for the ORCA Hub, which drew together academics from The University of Oxford, Liverpool, Heriot-Watt University and Imperial College London. This consortium explored the challenges and opportunities for the use of robotics in offshore energy. and more broadly how to make “resident robotics” for inspection, operations and maintenance of a wide range of public assets. Currently we have resident systems deployed offshore in the North Sea on a 6 month mission.
Robots for Nuclear Decommissioning: I was the academic-PI on the Innovate UK Connect-R project which was funded by Innovate UK, this was a £6M project with £1.45M to The School of Engineering. The industrial lead was Barrnon Ltd, and other partners include Ross Robotics, Royal Holloway, The UK Atomic Energy Authority (RACE), Tharsus, and Jigsaw Structures. The project aimed to remove workers from hazardous environments such as those found in offshore oil and gas, nuclear decommissioning, mining etc. and to replace them with a modular self-building robotic system. We successfully designed-built-and-tested this completely novel solution, with a demonstration at TRL-6, academic outputs in the leading AI conference, and a filed-patent which led to a new spin-out that is in the early stages from UofE: Fluidic Logic Ltd.
Bioengineered Technologies: In 2020 I led on a number of projects that we developed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. We gained funding from the Chief Scientist’s Office to develop a novel re-usable facemask that is customised to fit the wearer’s face. Other Covid-19 projects included working with a company to scale up their production of a disinfectant by automating their production line, developing ventilator prototypes, and making systems to facilitate intubation of patients. In 2021 we formed the start-up company Mask Logic Ltd, which has now taken a couple of private-equity investment rounds and was the winner of the Scottish Edge Competition in 2022.