The brushstroke - in its various manifestations - is the only communication tool that is encountered in paintings and drawings across generations. The production of a stroke involves a complex interplay between different perceptual, cognitive and physical processes. Its reproduction with computational and robotic technologies provides us with the opportunity to study and better understand these processes. The project "Embodied Agents in Contemporary Visual Art'' (EACVA) approaches this study through a multi-disciplinary collaboration between artists, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, as well as computer art and robotics engineers (website of the project accessible at www.eacva.co.uk). The collaboration will unfold throughout artistic residencies and workshops, during which we will develop a methodology informed by our respective fields of expertise while also producing artworks with state-of-the-art robotic painting and drawing systems. The software and tools, developed during this period in close collaboration with the artists involved, will be open source, thereby contributing to the growing community of artists and researchers working on artistic applications of robotics. Lastly, the resulting artworks, texts, and systems will be presented in the form of a public-facing exhibition at Goldsmiths College, University of London. The exhibition will include the presentation of live performance installations with several robots, exposing their internal representations and decision-making processes with the aim of demystifying machine and computer-driven creation. By combining state-of-the-art robotic systems with historical contexts and didactic curatorial methodologies, we will offer the public an informed insider view into the creative potential of machines. The show will provide a unique opportunity to further investigate our research questions by gathering quantitative and qualitative data through surveys. We will dedicate a post-production period to the creation of a printed catalogue.documenting the artworks and their production, and we will prepare publications relevant to the diverse disciplines represented within our collaborative team.

VISION: To create, run and exploit the world's leading research programme in mobile autonomy addressing fundamental technical issues which impede large scale commercial and societal adoption of mobile robotics. AMBITION: We need to build better robots - we need them to be cheap, work synergistically with people in large, complex and time-changing environments and do so for long periods of time. Moreover, it is essential that they are safe and trusted. We are compelled as researchers to produce the foundational technologies that will see robots work in economically and socially important domains. These motivations drive the science in this proposal. STRATEGY: Robotics is fast advancing to a point where autonomous systems can add real value to the public domain. The potential reach of mobile robotics in particular is vast, covering sectors as diverse as transport, logistics, space, defence, agriculture and infrastructure management. In order to realise this potential we need our robots to be cheap, work synergistically with people in large, complex and time-changing environments and do so robustly for long periods of time. Our aim, therefore, is to create a lasting, catalysing impact on UKPLC by growing a sustainable centre of excellence in mobile autonomy. A central tenet to this research is that the capability gap between the state of the art and what is needed is addressed by designing algorithms that leverage experiences gained through real and continued world use. Our machines will operate in support of humans and seamlessly integrate into complex cyber-physical systems with a variety of physical and computational elements. We must, therefore, be able to guarantee, and even certify, that the software that controls the robots is safe and trustworthy by design. We will engage in this via a range of flagship technology demonstrators in different domains (transport, logistics, space, etc.), which will mesh the research together, giving at once context, grounding, validation and impact.