Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	EP/P006094/1
Title:	Brains on Board: Neuromorphic Control of Flying Robots
Principal Investigator:	Marshall, Professor JAR
Other Investigators:	Vasilaki, Professor E Chittka, Professor L Philippides, Professor A Mangan, Dr M Graham, Professor P Nowotny, Professor T Juusola, Professor M
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:	Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg Macquarie University Malloy Aeronautics Ltd Movidius nVIDIA Parrot Sensapex
Department:	Computer Science
Organisation:	University of Sheffield
Scheme:	Programme Grants
Starts:	30 December 2016	Ends:	29 December 2021	Value (£):	4,816,675
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Artificial Intelligence Robotics & Autonomy
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Aerospace, Defence and Marine Information Technologies
Related Grants:
Panel History:	Panel Date Panel Name Outcome 01 Sep 2016 Programme Grant Interviews - 1 and 2 September 2016 (ICT) Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
What if we could design an autonomous flying robot with the navigational and learning abilities of a honeybee? Such a computationally and energy-efficient autonomous robot would represent a step-change in robotics technology, and is precisely what the 'Brains on Board' project aims to achieve. Autonomous control of mobile robots requires robustness to environmental and sensory uncertainty, and the flexibility to deal with novel environments and scenarios. Animals solve these problems through having flexible brains capable of unsupervised pattern detection and learning. Even 'small'-brained animals like bees exhibit sophisticated learning and navigation abilities using very efficient brains of only up to 1 million neurons, 100,000 times fewer than in a human brain. Crucially, these mini-brains nevertheless support high levels of multi-tasking and they are adaptable, within the lifetime of an individual, to completely novel scenarios; this is in marked contrast to typical control engineering solutions. This project will fuse computational and experimental neuroscience to develop a ground-breaking new class of highly efficient 'brain on board' robot controllers, able to exhibit adaptive behaviour while running on powerful yet lightweight General-Purpose Graphics Processing Unit hardware, now emerging for the mobile devices market. This will be demonstrated via autonomous and adaptive control of a flying robot, using an on-board computational simulation of the bee's neural circuits; an unprecedented achievement representing a step-change in robotics technology.
Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Project URL:
Further Information:
Organisation Website:	http://www.shef.ac.uk