In Sheffield, in the north of England, James Marshall is developing software to infuse robots with the spatial awareness of bees — an innovation he thinks will help his start-up tap into the fastest-growing part of the British economy.
Marshall has researched the insects’ brains for more than a decade; he argues that if robots are informed by bees’ and flies’ sense of space, it can boost factory floor efficiency. Within a year he expects insect-inspired automatons to be prowling the grounds of the UK’s Sellafield nuclear site to inspect hazardous areas and measure radiation.
“We want to develop our homegrown capacity to compete in AI internationally,” says Marshall, who is also director of the Centre for Machine Intelligence at Sheffield university. “This is very much the beginning.”