Professor Nick Hawes

hawes

Position

Group Leader (Human Robot Interfaces)

Partner Institution

Bio

Nick Hawes is an Associate Professor in the Oxford Robotics Institute, part of the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. Before joining Oxford he was a Reader in the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham. Nick has a background in AI for autonomous systems, particularly mission planning for autonomous robots operating in everyday environments. He has experience leading teams to deploy autonomous robots into application domains including care, logistics, and security, and to integrate multiple AI subsystems, from computer vision to learning from demonstration and dialogue. 

Research interests

Nick is interested in problems that emerge from using model-based decision making systems in autonomous robots in real-world applications. His current work explores the use of  Markov decision processes for mission planning under uncertainty in long-term autonomous systems, i.e. systems that must plan and act over weeks or months of behaviour. In this space he has a particular focus on planning using formal methods (e.g. probabilistic verification tools) and uncertain models, planning for multi-agent teams, and planning for human-robot shared autonomy.