Our project aims to provide an engaging, awe-inspiring interaction with science for a large, general public audience. Through an exhibition of large-scale, high-impact images in the city centre of Edinburgh, it will showcase the ways in which advances in science and technology can – through cutting-edge imagery techniques – reveal some of the wonderful sights normally hidden to us. Free, open and accessible, the exhibition will provide a valuable platform for reaching new audiences. It will form a valuable part of our continued attempts to make science and technology easily accessible to those not necessarily engaged with, or targeted by, most traditional science communication activity. It will showcase some of the vastness, complexity and beauty of science in fields such as biomedical imaging and astronomy. In doing so it will draw attention to the techniques, technologies and research that make it possible to glimpse these otherwise invisible worlds.

How would you like to have your house cleaned automatically by a robot? Would you trust a robot babysitter? Do you think you would fancy a robot partner? How far do you think present-day robotics technology has actually advanced - can you tell the difference between science fact and science fiction? If a fully-functional, thinking robot could be developed, would you consider it human?How many of us have really considered the technical challenges and ethical issues of robotics research? Robot Thought? - Thinking about Robots is an event designed to enable family audiences to consider and convey their opinions on issues relating to science and engineering. The event uses the format of short dramatic vignettes to highlight important practical, personal and social issues relating to robotics. During each vignette a particular concept or issue is presented to the audience, who are then encouraged to express their opinions and concerns about the issues, and debate the implications of robotics on future society.The event format has already been trialled in Bristol, to great acclaim. This project will involve taking the highly popular and thought provoking performances to family audiences across the country. Eight science communication venues and four robotics research laboratories have signed on as partners to enhance the delivery and dissemination of this exciting event format over the course of the two-year project.

The vast majority of cultural organisations face significant barriers in transitioning towards networked, online cultural and business models. We call this the 'New Real.' New literacies and skills are needed to develop and delight online audiences while negotiating the profound, complex challenges surrounding safety, privacy, transparency, and misinformation in networked environments. Being able to critically reason about the function of a system makes us more resilient in the face of future system failures, or can help us to make judgements about whether systems are safe and ethical. Our project responds directly to this need. Qualitative research through participatory design and ethnographic methodology will investigate the potential for strategies from data arts to be tailored and situated for organisations newly producing online experiences. It will specifically address the design of online and hybrid experiences to both delight audiences and develop critical literacies around the underlying tensions and moral dilemmas in the New Real. Aim: to better understand how to facilitate and accelerate the transition to resilience through new cultural, social and economic models for the UK's world leading cultural sector. This is supported by three concrete Objectives (O), each corresponding to a work-package (WP) and research question (RQ): O1: Understand the strategies used by data arts practitioners and organisations to delight audiences and build critical literacies in the New Real. O2: Co-design pathways with cultural organisations towards new forms of pandemic-resilient online and hybrid experiences. O3: Synthesise a set of actionable insights, tools, concepts and models that can enable and support post-COVID19 recovery.

Cyberneering 2008, an exhibit and activity space at the Edinburgh International Science Festival's Wonderama venue where science and engineering students will engage both children and adults in a variety of activities based on Heriot-Watt University's EPSRC funded projects including SMI (Scottish Manufacturing Institutes) research projects. Here families will see how state-of-the art technologies can be used as creative and analytical tools in the engineering design process. The activities and exhibits will cover a number of engineering disciplines listed here:1 Manufacturing Engineering / Haptic Design , an activity developed for EPSRC PPE Grant EP/D067596/1 Making the Future ;2 Engineering Design / Design-a-Zook , based on work in the EPSRC IMRC Grand Challenge Grant EP/C534220/1 Immortal Information and Through Life Knowledge Management using CBBC's BAMZOOKi software;3 Mechanical Engineering / ROLAND an interactive robot display developed for EPSRC PPA GR/S80653/01 / Robot / Fact, fiction and future. 4 Electronic Engineering / Talking Robot Head , an exhibit developed for EPSRC PPE Grant EP/E033172/1 Engineering : A brighter, younger future ;5 Optical Engineering / Sensing with Light , a new hands on exhibit that will introduce the use of optical techniques for engineering applications.6 Chemical Engineering / Mixing it Up , a new chemical engineering exhibit that makes the link between visual computer simulations of mixing processes and the physical process as demonstrated by a small scale oscillatory baffled reactor.We feel that activities and exhibits at family orientated Science Festivals and Science Centres can play an important roll in educating and influencing young people's career choices. By showing both children and their accompanying adults that engineering is creative, enjoyable and of the digital age , children's positive views of engineering may be supported and encouraged by their family. In addition it is important to inform the public of the diverse skills required for engineering and in particular emphasise that they may already have some of those skills such as imagination, creativity, team working, problem solving and computing and may want to develop others: maths and sciences. Cyberneering 2008 builds on the proposers' experience from staging Cyberneering with Heriot-Watt at the 2007 Edinburgh International Science Festival (EISF) which show cased three activities/events, Haptic Design , Design-a-Zook and ROLAND . The prospers feel that it was the combination of activities that led to the overall success of the 2007 Cyberneering exhibit and feel that there is value in repeating this on a slightly larger scale in 2008. Lessons learned indicate that more interactive drop-in exhibits would appeal to, and reach a wider audience, while the hands-on activities with high engineer-to-participant ratio provide a quality experience for a large age-range of children and their adults. Cyberneering 2008 will include further developed versions of the three activities shown in 2007 together with three additional activities that cover electronics, optics, and chemical engineering. The overall theme will be to show a variety of engineering disciplines in the computer age.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.