Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

Where Excel London
When 22 – 25 September 2016
What Talks, debates, exhibits, demonstrations. Interact with the latest technology and engage with 100 of the world’s most original thinkers

Come and see

Social robotics: Friendly little helper

Say hello to Nao, one of a new generation of robots designed to enhance people’s lives by engaging them socially. He has helped teach children with autism, motivate kids with diabetes and been a companion for older people.

Nao is diminutive and responds to people by locking eyes and holding simple conversations. He can sing, dance and respond to being touched.

His friendly exterior masks some serious kit. His eyes are high-definition cameras and he has enough smarts to detect, track and identify faces and objects. Voice recognition lets him hear what’s being said and a voice synthesiser delivers appropriate responses.

For researchers Nao is a highly flexible test bed. He has been programmed, for example, to be an interface for a smart home. When asked, he can turn up the heat or play music.

His friendly, non-judgemental demeanour is a hit with kids, too. Children with autism often enjoy interacting with Nao, and he can play games to help kids with diabetes control their blood sugar.

Nao will be our guest at New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ Live, courtesy of Emotion Robotics. Come along and say hello, shake hands or just watch him dance.

Come and hear

Technology: What next for the LHC?
Tara Shears

In recent months, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has found tantalising hints of strange particles nobody had predicted. Are we about to see a revolution in our understanding of physics? Tara Shears of the University of Liverpool, who works at CERN, introduces the subatomic world, the latest results and what they mean.

Earth: Nature’s medicines
William Milliken

From antimalarial bark to flowers that destroy tumours, rainforests are nature’s medicine cabinet. Local peoples have been dipping into this store for millennia, and now modern bioprospectors want their knowledge. William Milliken from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew shares some remarkable secrets of the world’s plants, and efforts to recognise our debt to traditional civilisations.

Brain & body: Conscious minds
Anil Seth

We interact with the world around us without a second thought. But what is consciousness, and how does the brain create it? Neuroscientist Anil Seth from the University of Sussex surveys the latest research across multiple disciplines, charts how far we’ve come and what we still don’t understand.

Technology: The future of AI
Irina Higgins

Artificial intelligence is flourishing, largely thanks to machine learning. This technology recently enabled Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo program to not only outwit the human Go champion of the world but use game moves never seen before. Irina Higgins of DeepMind has the inside story on the future of AI.