Professor Richard Harvey is on of the University of East Anglia’s Academic Lead for the AgriFoRwArdS CDT. He an integral member of the East Anglia team, not only working in the School of Computing Sciences but also as the Academic Director for Admissions, responsible for the University’s admission and outreach activities. As if he wasn’t busy enough, Richard is also a Professor of IT at Gresham College, London.

With focus in machine learning, artificial intelligence and computer vision, Richard is interested in the possibility that agri-robotics can be more than about automating existing agricultural practice, but also allow us to create new types of agriculture, for example, robots that forage, or robots that cook produce in the field.

In his spare time, Richard enjoys volunteering as a Ranger for the Norfolk Broads Authority. “Rangers do a bit of talking to the public but mostly it’s chopping down tress, driving boats and other machinery, while attempting to look like we know what we are doing.”

One of Richards many passions is opera and he has said he would be more than willing to travel a few thousand miles to see one he wanted to see.

Richard would say he goes through “intense phases of interest” and has focused on many theoretical areas in the past, such as scale-space vision systems, then a new sort of vision processing and then lip-reading.

When asked why he became involved with the CDT, Richard said, “I could see the imperative for upskilling in agriculture, and it was also evident that robotic solutions in agriculture would need some input in Computer Vision.”