The societal needs such as helping elderly and rapid technological advances have transformed robotics in recent years. Making robots autonomous and at the same time able to interact safely with real world objects is desired in order to extend their range of applications to highly interactive tasks such as caring for the elderly. However, attaining robots capable of doing such tasks is challenging as the environmental model they often use is incomplete, which underlines the importance of sensors to obtain information at a sufficient rate to deal with external change. In robotics, the sensing modality par excellence so far has been vision in its multiple forms, for example lasers, or simply stereoscopic arrangements of conventional cameras. On other hand the animal world uses a wider variety of sensory modalities. The tactile/touch sensing is particularly important as many of the interactive tasks involve physical contact which carry precious information that is exploited by biological brains and ought to be exploited by robots to ensure adaptive behaviour. However, the absence of suitable tactile skin technology makes this task difficult. PRINTSKIN will develop a robust ultra-flexible tactile skin and endow state-of-the-art robotic hand with the tactile skin and validate the skin by using tactile information from large areas of robot hands to handle daily object with different curvatures. The tactile skin will be benchmarked against available semi-rigid skins such as iCub skin from EU project ROBOSKIN and Hex-O-Skin. The skin will be validated on at least two different industrial robotic hands (Shadow Hand and i-Limb) that are used in dexterous manipulation and prosthetics. The robust ultra-thin tactile skin will be developed using an innovative methodology involving printing of high-mobility materials such as silicon on ultra-flexible substrates such as polyimide. The tactile skin will have solid-state sensors (touch, temperature) and electronics printed on ultra-flexible substrates such as polyimide. The silicon-nanowires based ultra-thin active-matrix electronics in the backplane will be covered with a replaceable soft transducer layer. Integration of electronic and sensing modules on a foil or as stack of foils will be explored. 'Truly bottom-up approach' is the distinguishing feature of PRINTSKIN methodology as the development of tactile skin will begin with atom by atom synthesis of nanowires and finish with the development of tactile skin system - much like the way nature uses proteins and macromolecules to construct complex biological systems. This new technological platform to print tactile skin will enable an entirely new generation of high-performance and cost-effective systems on flexible substrates. Fabrication by printing will have important implications for cost-effective integration over large areas and on nonconventional substrates, such as plastic or paper. Printing of high-performance electronics is also appealing for mask-less approach, reduced material wastage, and scalability to large area. The proposed programme thus has the potential to emulate yet another revolution in the electronics industry and trigger transformation in various sectors including, robotics, healthcare, and wearable electronics.

Imagine a future where autonomous systems are widely available to improve our lives. In this future, autonomous robots unobtrusively maintain the infrastructure of our cities, and support people in living fulfilled independent lives. In this future, autonomous software reliably diagnoses disease at early stages, and dependably manages our road traffic to maximise flow and minimise environmental impact. Before this vision becomes reality, several major limitations of current autonomous systems need to be addressed. Key among these limitations is their reduced resilience: today's autonomous systems cannot avoid, withstand, recover from, adapt, and evolve to handle the uncertainty, change, faults, failure, adversity, and other disruptions present in such applications. Recent and forthcoming technological advances will provide autonomous systems with many of the sensors, actuators and other functional building blocks required to achieve the desired resilience levels, but this is not enough. To be resilient and trustworthy in these important applications, future autonomous systems will also need to use these building blocks effectively, so that they achieve complex technical requirements without violating our social, legal, ethical, empathy and cultural (SLEEC) rules and norms. Additionally, they will need to provide us with compelling evidence that the decisions and actions supporting their resilience satisfy both technical and SLEEC-compliance goals. To address these challenging needs, our project will develop a comprehensive toolbox of mathematically based notations and models, SLEEC-compliant resilience-enhancing methods, and systematic approaches for developing, deploying, optimising, and assuring highly resilient autonomous systems and systems of systems. To this end, we will capture the multidisciplinary nature of the social and technical aspects of the environment in which autonomous systems operate - and of the systems themselves - via mathematical models. For that, we have a team of Computer Scientists, Engineers, Psychologists, Philosophers, Lawyers, and Mathematicians, with an extensive track record of delivering research in all areas of the project. Working with such a mathematical model, autonomous systems will determine which resilience- enhancing actions are feasible, meet technical requirements, and are compliant with the relevant SLEEC rules and norms. Like humans, our autonomous systems will be able to reduce uncertainty, and to predict, detect and respond to change, faults, failures and adversity, proactively and efficiently. Like humans, if needed, our autonomous systems will share knowledge and services with humans and other autonomous agents. Like humans, if needed, our autonomous systems will cooperate with one another and with humans, and will proactively seek assistance from experts. Our work will deliver a step change in developing resilient autonomous systems and systems of systems. Developers will have notations and guidance to specify the socio-technical norms and rules applicable to the operational context of their autonomous systems, and techniques to design resilient autonomous systems that are trustworthy and compliant with these norms and rules. Additionally, developers will have guidance to build autonomous systems that can tolerate disruption, making the system usable in a larger set of circumstances. Finally, they will have techniques to develop resilient autonomous systems that can share information and services with peer systems and humans, and methods for providing evidence of the resilience of their systems. In such a context, autonomous systems and systems of systems will be highly resilient and trustworthy.

The nuclear industry has some of the most extreme environments in the world, with radiation levels and other hazards frequently restricting human access to facilities. Even when human entry is possible, the risks can be significant and very low levels of productivity. To date, robotic systems have had limited impact on the nuclear industry, but it is clear that they offer considerable opportunities for improved productivity and significantly reduced human risk. The nuclear industry has a vast array of highly complex and diverse challenges that span the entire industry: decommissioning and waste management, Plant Life Extension (PLEX), Nuclear New Build (NNB), small modular reactors (SMRs) and fusion. Whilst the challenges across the nuclear industry are varied, they share many similarities that relate to the extreme conditions that are present. Vitally these similarities also translate across into other environments, such as space, oil and gas and mining, all of which, for example, have challenges associated with radiation (high energy cosmic rays in space and the presence of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) in mining and oil and gas). Major hazards associated with the nuclear industry include radiation; storage media (for example water, air, vacuum); lack of utilities (such as lighting, power or communications); restricted access; unstructured environments. These hazards mean that some challenges are currently intractable in the absence of solutions that will rely on future capabilities in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (RAI). Reliable robotic systems are not just essential for future operations in the nuclear industry, but they also offer the potential to transform the industry globally. In decommissioning, robots will be required to characterise facilities (e.g. map dose rates, generate topographical maps and identify materials), inspect vessels and infrastructure, move, manipulate, cut, sort and segregate waste and assist operations staff. To support the life extension of existing nuclear power plants, robotic systems will be required to inspect and assess the integrity and condition of equipment and facilities and might even be used to implement urgent repairs in hard to reach areas of the plant. Similar systems will be required in NNB, fusion reactors and SMRs. Furthermore, it is essential that past mistakes in the design of nuclear facilities, which makes the deployment of robotic systems highly challenging, do not perpetuate into future builds. Even newly constructed facilities such as CERN, which now has many areas that are inaccessible to humans because of high radioactive dose rates, has been designed for human, rather than robotic intervention. Another major challenge that RAIN will grapple with is the use of digital technologies within the nuclear sector. Virtual and Augmented Reality, AI and machine learning have arrived but the nuclear sector is poorly positioned to understand and use these rapidly emerging technologies. RAIN will deliver the necessary step changes in fundamental robotics science and establish the pathways to impact that will enable the creation of a research and innovation ecosystem with the capability to lead the world in nuclear robotics. While our centre of gravity is around nuclear we have a keen focus on applications and exploitation in a much wider range of challenging environments.

Living beings share the same embodiment for sensing and action. For instance, the spindle sensors that provide the feeling of a joint angle and speed are embedded on the muscles that actuate this joint. The tendon sensors that provide the feeling of force too are directly involved in actuation of the joint. Do the function of these sensors change when the muscles are activated to take action? Does the co-activation of antagonistic muscles play a role not only in actuation, but also in perception? This project will investigate these questions through targeted experiments with human participants and controllable stiffness soft robots that provide greater access to internal variables. Recent experiments we have conducted on localising hard nodules in soft tissues using soft robotic probes have shown that tuning the stiffness of the probe can maximise information gain of perceiving the hard nodule. We have also noticed that human participants use distinct force-velocity modulation strategies in the same task of localising a hard nodule in a soft tissue using the index finger. This raises the question as to whether we can find quantitative criteria to control the internal impedance of a soft robotic probe to maximise the efficacy of manipulating a soft object to perceive its hidden properties like in physical examination of a patient's abdomen. In this project, we will thus use carefully designed probing tasks done by both human participants and a soft robotic probe with controllable stiffness to access various levels of measurable information such as muscle co-contraction, change of speed and force, to test several hypotheses about the role of internal impedance in perception and action. Finally, we will use a human-robot collaborative physical examination task to test the effectiveness of a new soft robotic probe with controllable stiffness together with its stiffness and behaviour control algorithms. We will design and fabricate the novel soft robotic probe so that we can control the stiffness of its soft tissue in which sensors will be embedded to obtain embodied haptic perception. We will also design and fabricate a novel soft abdomen phantom with controllable stiffness internal organs to conduct palpation experiments. The innovation process of the above two designs - the novel probe and the abdomen phantom - will be done in collaboration with three leading industrial partners in the respective areas. The new insights will make a paradigm shift in the way we design soft robots that can share the controllable stiffness embodiment for both perception and action in a number of applications like remote medical interventions, robotic proxies in shopping, disaster response, games, museums, security screening, and manufacturing.

Our proposal requests five distinct bundles of equipment to enhance the University's capabilities in research areas ranging across aerospace, complex chemistry, electronics, healthcare, magnetic, microscopy and sensors. Each bundle includes equipment with complementary capabilities and this will open up opportunities for researchers across the University, ensuring maximum utilisation. This proposal builds on excellent research in these fields, identified by the University as strategically important, which has received significant external funding and University investment funding. The new facilities will strengthen capacity and capabilities at Glasgow and profit from existing mechanisms for sharing access and engaging with industry. The requested equipment includes: - Nanoscribe tool for 3D micro- and nanofabrication for development of low-cost printed sensors. - Integrated suite of real-time manipulation, spectroscopy and control systems for exploration of complex chemical systems with the aim of establishing the new field of Chemical Cybernetics. - Time-resolved Tomographic Particle Image Velocimetry - Digital Image correlation system to simultaneously measure and quantify fluid and surface/structure behaviour and interaction to support research leading to e.g. reductions in aircraft weight, drag and noise, and new environmentally friendly engines and vehicles. - Two microscopy platforms with related optical illumination and excitation sources to create a Microscopy Research Lab bringing EPS researchers together with the life sciences community to advance techniques for medical imaging. - Magnetic Property Measurement system, complemented by a liquid helium cryogenic sample holder for transmission electron microscopy, to facilitate a diverse range of new collaborations in superconductivity-based devices, correlated electronic systems and solid state-based quantum technologies. These new facilities will enable interdisciplinary teams of researchers in chemistry, computing science, engineering, medicine, physics, mathematics and statistics to come together in new areas of research. These groups will also work with industry to transform a multitude of applications in healthcare, aerospace, transport, energy, defence, security and scientific and industrial instrumentation. With the improved facilities: - Printed electronics will be developed to create new customized healthcare technologies, high-performance low-cost sensors and novel manufacturing techniques. - Current world-leading complex chemistry research will discover, design, develop and evolve molecules and materials, to include adaptive materials, artificial living systems and new paradigms in manufacturing. - Advanced flow control technologies inside aero engine and wing configurations will lead to greener products and important environmental impacts. - Researchers in microscopy and related life science disciplines can tackle biomedical science challenges and take those outputs forward so that they can be used in clinical settings, with benefits to healthcare. - Researchers will be able to develop new interfaces in advanced magnetics materials and molecules which will give new capabilities to biomedical applications, data storage and telecommunications devices. We have existing industry partners who are poised to make use of the new facilities to improve their current products and to steer new joint research activities with a view to developing new products that will create economic, social and environmental impacts. In addition, we have networks of industrialists who will be invited to access our facilities and to work with us to drive forward new areas of research which will deliver future impacts to patients, consumers, our environment and the wider public.