Witness the technology redefining our physical world. Explore how agri-food robotics and AI applications are transforming the way we live and work. From the farm to the deep ocean, discover how advanced marine surveying is protecting vital ecosystems and breaking the boundaries of what we thought possible.
Transforming Agriculture, One Robot at a Time
Eduardo Cedillo Hernández (Postgraduate researcher, University of Essex)
We’re building smart robots for farming—machines that can pick strawberries, handle lettuce, and operate in unstructured environments where we don’t control everything.
It sounds simple, but farms are messy, unpredictable, and full of edge cases that break even the smartest systems. Our work focuses on: giving robots the ability to perceive, decide, and act in the real world—not just in simulations or labs.
In this talk, we’ll share what it actually takes to build these systems, what goes wrong (a lot), and what this could mean for the future of food, automation, and how we design intelligent machines for real-world applications.
From Vision to Intelligence: How AI Understands the Physical World
Minerva Sarma (Data Scientist (KTP Associate), University of Essex)
What if machines could not only see, but think about what they see? This talk explores how computer vision is helping AI interpret real-world environments—detecting objects, understanding spaces, and making decisions in seconds. Through interactive demos and real examples, discover how visual AI is transforming everyday industries, where it still gets things wrong, and why the future of AI is about turning sight into intelligence.
Oceans, Algorithms, and a Changing Blue Planet
Dr Jon Chamberlain (Senior Lecturer, University of Essex)
The ocean covers 70% of our planet, yet much of it remains unseen. As technology transforms how we explore the deep, how do we gather accurate knowledge of marine environments? Discover how computers are learning to “see” beneath the waves, and how this is helping protect vital ecosystems. A thought-provoking journey into oceans, algorithms, and the future of our blue planet.