Man and Machine: Friends or Foes?

Where do you start when designing and building a bicycle that will break human powered land speed records? This was the challenge set in 2015 to a group of University of Liverpool Engineering students. Since 2015 the School of Engineering ARION teams have gone on to break British and World Land Speed records, this is the story of their success.

Modern medicine can detect & monitor a large number of illnesses. However many of these tests can be slow – have you had to ever wait for blood results to come back? This can be a stressful time & result in potential delays to starting treatment. One of the main reasons for this is the need for large, expensive equipment & specialist staff to conduct the tests & analyse the results. In this talk Ian will outline how smaller equipment which makes use of modern electronics (such as the chips inside your phone), could lead to a revolution where every doctors surgery has their own test facilities.

Look around you. Smart machines & robots are everywhere. From the ATM at the bank to the washing machine in your house, everything is automated & intelligent now. Robotics will play a key role in the scientific laboratories of the future. These labs will combine humans & robots working together. Collaborative-robots, or “cobots” are a new generation of robots which work side by side with humans as co-workers. David will introduce recent progress & challenges in robotics & intelligent automation systems & how the concept of cobotics is being used in defining the scientific labs of the future.