Dr. James Wilson
Lecturer in Robotics
Work: +44 (0) 7506 778 392
After completing my PhD in 2019 at the University of York, where I focused on Intelligent Systems and specifically on hormone-inspired techniques for behavioural adaptation in swarms of robots, I joined Deloitte as a Machine Learning consultant in the finance sector. During my time at Deloitte, I was seconded to various financial institutions, optimizing and improving their practices through the design and deployment of data science solutions.
In 2021, I returned to academia as a Research Associate at the University of Bristol. There, I began investigating Trustworthiness in Robotic Swarm systems, developing techniques to enable human operators to understand, interact with, and control multi-agent systems while preserving the innate decentralization and adaptive qualities of Robot Swarms.
Shortly thereafter, I took up a position as a Lecturer at the Dyson Institute, where my teaching focuses on Control and Robotics. I continue to conduct research in Trustworthiness and multi-agency, integrating my findings into my teaching content.
Why did you choose to join the Dyson Institute?
I saw the position at the Dyson Institute as a rare and exciting opportunity to join a growing higher education establishment. I was attracted by the prospect of shaping the Institute from its early stages; contributing to the program to make the learning and development at the Institute a unique experience.
Another large factor in my decision to join the Dyson Institute, and one of the largest benefits of the Dyson Institute over traditional higher education establishments, is it’s close coupling with industry. Students at the Dyson Institute are not just provided with the tools needed to be an engineer, but also get to apply their learning, first-hand, to real engineering systems.
The coupling of academic study and industry gives students meaning and reason behind their learning, compounding concepts and providing clarity through practical application in an innovative workspace.
As an academic, I feel a similar benefit from this industry coupling. The teaching and research I conduct has immediate impact to concepts and designs for practical implementation – something I have strived for in my early work as a researcher, and that I am keen to explore further in my work to come.
Qualifications
- Electronic Engineering - PhD - University Of York (2019)
- Electronic Engineering - BEng (Hons) - University Of York (2016)
- Robotics
- Final Year Project
- Systems Modelling & Control
- Control Systems
Research
My academic pursuits are centred around the fields of swarm robotics, Human-Robot collaboration, and trustworthiness.
My research contributions include authoring several papers on topics such as trustworthiness in swarm robotics, hormone inspired system control, and generating intuitive and interactable multi-agent systems. These works aim to advance the reliability and efficiency of multi-agent autonomous robotic systems, while simultaneously making them more understandable to users, and a more attractive prospect for adoption by consumers and industry.
Publications
- P. Winter, J. Downer, J. Wilson, et al., “Applying the “sotec” framework of sociotechnical risk analysis to the development of an autonomous robot swarm for a public cloakroom,” Risk Analysis,
- D. B. Abeywickrama, A. Bennaceur, G. Chance, et al., “On specifying for trustworthiness,” Communications of the ACM, vol. 67, no. 1, pp. 98–109, 2023.
- D. B. Abeywickrama, J. Wilson, S. Lee, et al., “Aeros: Assurance of emergent behaviour in autonomous robotic swarms,” in International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security, Springer, 2023, pp. 341–354.
- J. Wilson, G. Chance, P. Winter, et al., “Trustworthy swarms,” in Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Trustworthy Autonomous Systems, 2023, pp. 1–11.
- J. Wilson and S. Hauert, “Search space illumination of robot swarm parameters for trustworthy interaction,” in International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems, Springer, 2022, pp. 173–186.
- J. Wilson and S. Hauert, “Information transport in communication limited swarms,” Artificial Life and Robotics, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 632–639, 2022.
- J. Wilson, J. Timmis, and A. Tyrrell, “An amalgamation of hormone inspired arbitration systems for application in robot swarms,” Applied Sciences, vol. 9, no. 17, p. 3524, 2019.
- J. Wilson, J. Timmis, and A. Tyrrell, “A hormone-inspired arbitration system for self identifying abilities amongst a heterogeneous robot swarm, in 2018 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI), IEEE, 2018, pp. 843–850.
- J. Wilson, J. Timmis, and A. Tyrrell, “A hormone arbitration system for energy efficient foraging in robot swarms,” in Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems: 19th Annual Conference, TAROS 2018, Bristol, UK July 25-27, 2018, Proceedings 19, Springer, 2018, pp. 305–316.
