This last quarter saw significant change within the AgriFoRwArdS CDT. On 2nd March 2021 we said farewell to our CDT Director Professor Tom Duckett and were very pleased to welcome in his place, our new CDT Director Professor Marc Hanheide.
Marc is a Professor of Intelligent Robotics & Interactive Systems within the School of Computer Science at the University of Lincoln. He is Principle Investigator in many national and international research projects (including STRANDS, ILIAD, RASberry and NCNR), is Director of Research within the School of Computer Science, Programme Leader for Post-Graduate Research Programmes and teaches AI and Robotics.
We asked Marc why he originally became involved with the CDT; “I became involved with the CDT because agri-food robotics is a challenging and exciting application domain for robotics research and I have led a number of projects already in that domain.”
Marc’s favourite thing about the CDT is working with the ‘rising stars’ who are ambitious and talented people with fresh ideas. And when asked what he was passionate about Marc explained “Building actually working robotic systems that solve real- world problems.”
When Marc is not falling to his knees in front of Prince Charles and David Cameron (yes that actually happened, oops!) he likes to make the most of the outdoors, cycling and running. He also enjoys a bit of ‘leisure coding’ and loves spending time with his family and children.
Marc is originally from Germany, where he received his Diploma and PhD in Computer Science from Bielefeld University in 2001 and 2006 respectively. From 2006 to 2009 he was a Senior Researcher within the Applied Computer Science Group and in 2009 he then moved to the UK and took up a place as a Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham. As well as agriculture Marc’s work contributes to robotic applications in many varying sectors, including care, logistics, nuclear decommissioning, security and museums.
On 19th March 2021 Marc spoke to the AgriFoRwArdS community as part of the AgriFoRwArdS Seminar Series. His talk ‘Working with and along-side humans in agricultural robotics’ covered the latest developments at the University of Lincoln on multimodal detection and tracking people in agricultural fields, interaction design for agricultural workers, and long-term deployment and coordination of robotic fleets in soft-fruit production. You can access Marc’s talk, and all previous Seminar Series talks via out Seminar Series Archive here, or by visiting the AgriFoRwArdS YouTube Channel here.
You can follow Marc on twitter at https://twitter.com/MarcHanheide/ for regular updates on his research.