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The global Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) market was $25.5bn in 2001 and is growing. The market potential for future robotics and autonomous systems is of huge value to the UK. The need for expansion in this important sector is well recognised, as evidenced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer's announcement of £35m investment in the sector in 2012, the highlighting of this sector in the 2012 BIS Foresight report 'Technology and Innovation Futures' and the identification of robotics and autonomous systems by the Minister for Universities and Science in 2013 as one of the "8 great technologies" that will drive future growth. This expansion will be fuelled by a step change in RAS capability, the key to which is their increased adaptability. For example, a home care robot must adapt safely to its owner's unpredictable behaviour; micro air vehicles will be sent into damaged buildings without knowing the layout or obstructions; a high value manufacturing robot will need to manufacture small batches of different components. The key to achieving increased adaptability is that the innovators who develop them must, themselves, be very adaptable people. FARSCOPE, the Future Autonomous and Robotic Systems Centre for PhD Education, aims to meet the need for a new generation of innovators who will drive the robotics and autonomous systems sector in the coming decade and beyond. The Centre will train over 50 students in the essential RAS technical underpinning skills, the ability to integrate RAS knowledge and technologies to address real-world problems, and the understanding of wider implications and applications of RAS and the ability to innovate within, and beyond, this sector. FARSCOPE will be delivered by a partnership between the University of Bristol (UoB) and the University of the West of England (UWE). It will bring together the dedicated 3000 square metre Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), one of the largest robotics laboratories in Europe, with a training and supervising team drawn from UoB and UWE offering a wide breadth of experience and depth of expertise in autonomous systems and related topics. The FARSCOPE centre will exploit the strengths of BRL, including medical and healthcare robotics, energy autonomous robotics, safe human-robot interactions, soft robotics, unconventional computing, experimental psychology, biomimicry, machine vision including vision-based navigation and medical imaging and an extensive aerial robotics portfolio including unmanned air vehicles and autonomous flight control. Throughout the four-year training programme industry and stakeholder partners will actively engage with the CDT, helping to deliver the programme and sharing both their domain expertise and their commercial experience with FARSCOPE students. This includes regular seminar series, industrial placements, group 'grand challenge' project, enterprise training and the three-year individual research project. Engaged partners include BAE Systems, DSTL, Blue Bear Systems, SciSys, National Composites Centre, Rolls Royce, Toshiba, NHS SouthWest and OC Robotics. FARSCOPE also has commitment from a range of international partners from across Europe, the Americas and Asia who are offering student exchange placements and who will enhance the global perspective of the programme.

European Robotic goal-oriented autonomous COntroller (ERGO) The specific objective of ERGO is thaen to deliver the most advanced but flexible space autonomous framework/system suitable for single and/or collaborative space robotic means/missions (orbital and surface rovers) demanding robust operations with adaptable levels of autonomy. Due to the intrinsic similarities of addressed scenarios, especially for what concerns surface applications, ERGO has to be/and has been thought so to be applicable to terrestrial robotic applications requiring high level of autonomy. In order to achieve this challenging objective, the ERGO team has been settled such to guarantee strong background both in robotics in general and operational autonomous space robotic missions (GMV, ADS, SciSys), as well as state of the art expertise in goal oriented autonomy (GMV), planning (King College, University of Basel, GMV), guidance and navigation for robotic applications (GMV, ADS, SciSys), formal validation and verification (UGA-UGA), on-board critical software design and development (GMV, Ellidiss ).