So, September has been and gone, and as October brings the start of the 2016-17 session, I thought I would take a little time to reflect on our recent activities and highlight some of our successess.


We have had some absolutely amazing events this year and I'm very proud to have been involved with each of them, working with our fantastic volunteers and staff colleagues.   We have collaborated with UKRAS Network, Imperial Hackspace, KTN to name but a few.  Our speakers have come from far and wide and so have our delegates.  


If you visit our blog pages  you will see a number of reports on our past events, including two hackathons, a robot start up day, our IET/TAROS public lecture, and our International Robotics Day held in Savoy Place in July.   We also participated in a joint event with our Aerospace TPN on Rosetta Space Mission, which has been in the news again recently.  Additionally the TPN has sponsored a number of external conferences and offered a number of prizes at events.   All in all, it has been a busy year.  We are now taking some time to organise our next series of events, under the Chairmanship of Xiu Tian Yan,  in his third and final year of office.


The field of robotics is an exciting and ever changing one. I learnt recently at an IET event (by the Control & Automation TPN) on Factories of the Future,  that the first recognised industrial robot was invented in 1938, powered by a single motor and controlled by punch tape. Boy have we moved on since then!  Robots are used extensively in the manufacturing of motor cars, but largely take up of industrial robots in the UK has been slow.  Just a week ago, Alison Carnwath, Chairman of Land Securities, went on record saying she believes robots will soon be building skyscrapers, and alongside this, has predicted massive job losses as construction companies hire fewer staff. So, for this blog, I'd like to leave you with this video of Hadrian X, the robot who can build a house in just two days, apparently!





Until next time,

Joanne