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Date


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173 results

Opportunities and challenges for monitoring terrestrial biodiversity in the robotics age

Journal Article
Pringle, S., Dallimer, M., Goddard, M. A., Le Goff, L. K., Hart, E., Langdale, S. J., Fisher, J. C., Abad, S.-A., Ancrenaz, M., Angeoletto, F., Auat Cheein, F., Austen, G. E., Bailey, J. J., Baldock, K. C. R., Banin, L. F., Banks-Leite, C., Barau, A. S., Bashyal, R., Bates, A. J., Bicknell, J. E., …Davies, Z. G. (2025)
Opportunities and challenges for monitoring terrestrial biodiversity in the robotics age. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 9(6), 1031-1042. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02704-9
With biodiversity loss escalating globally, a step change is needed in our capacity to accurately monitor species populations across ecosystems. Robotic and autonomous systems...

XAI for Algorithm Configuration and Selection

Book Chapter
Thomson, S. L., Hart, E., & Renau, Q. (2025)
XAI for Algorithm Configuration and Selection. In N. van Stein, & A. V. Kononova (Eds.), Explainable AI for Evolutionary Computation. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-2540-6_6
In this chapter, we consider, formalise, and demonstrate the ways in which XAI can assist or inform algorithm selection and configuration. Reviewing the literature, we notice ...

Algorithm Selection with Probing Trajectories: Benchmarking the Choice of Classifier Model

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Renau, Q., & Hart, E. (2025, April)
Algorithm Selection with Probing Trajectories: Benchmarking the Choice of Classifier Model. Presented at EvoSTAR 2025, Trieste, Italy
Recent approaches to training algorithm selectors in the black-box optimisation domain have advocated for the use of training data that is 'algorithm-centric' in order to enca...

Beyond the Hype: Benchmarking LLM-Evolved Heuristics for Bin Packing

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Sim, K., Hart, E., & Renau, Q. (2025, April)
Beyond the Hype: Benchmarking LLM-Evolved Heuristics for Bin Packing. Presented at EvoSTAR 2025, Trieste, Italy
Coupling Large Language Models (LLMs) with Evolutionary Algorithms has recently shown significant promise as a technique to design new heuristics that outperform existing meth...

Into the Black Box: Mining Variable Importance with XAI

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Hunter, K., Thomson, S. L., & Hart, E. (2025, April)
Into the Black Box: Mining Variable Importance with XAI. Presented at Evostar 2025, Trieste, Italy
Recent works have shown that the idea of mining search spaces to train machine learning models can facilitate increasing understanding of variable importance in optimisation p...

Stalling in Space: Attractor Analysis for any Algorithm

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Thomson, S. L., Renau, Q., Vermetten, D., Hart, E., van Stein, N., & Kononova, A. V. (2025, April)
Stalling in Space: Attractor Analysis for any Algorithm. Paper presented at EvoStar 2025, Trieste, Italy
Network-based representations of fitness landscapes have grown in popularity in the past decade; this is probably because of growing interest in explainability for optimisatio...

’Bots on the Ground vs Boots on the Ground: The Future of Robots in Terrestrial Ecological Surveying

Journal Article
White, P., Le Goff, L., Emery, L., Abrahams, C., Findlay, M., Cook, J., Macleod, K., Deacon, L., Reason, P., Stanhope, K., Wale, M., Hart, E., & Diele, K. (2025)
’Bots on the Ground vs Boots on the Ground: The Future of Robots in Terrestrial Ecological Surveying. In Practice (CIEEM), 27, 47-52
At the 2023 CIEEM Modernising Ecology conference, a robot greeted the attendees as they arrived. Was it a glimpse into the future? As with other technologies, robots have the ...

An Evaluation of Domain-agnostic Representations to Enable Multi-task Learning in Combinatorial Optimisation

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Stone, C., Renau, Q., Miguel, I., & Hart, E. (2024, June)
An Evaluation of Domain-agnostic Representations to Enable Multi-task Learning in Combinatorial Optimisation. Presented at 18th Learning and Intelligent Optimization Conference, Ischia, Italy
We address the question of multi-task algorithm selection in combinatorial optimisation domains. This is motivated by a desire to simplify the algorithm-selection pipeline by ...

Evaluating the Robustness of Deep-Learning Algorithm-Selection Models by Evolving Adversarial Instances

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Hart, E., Renau, Q., Sim, K., & Alissa, M. (2024, September)
Evaluating the Robustness of Deep-Learning Algorithm-Selection Models by Evolving Adversarial Instances. Presented at 18th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving From Nature PPSN 2024, Hagenburg, Austria
Deep neural networks (DNN) are increasingly being used to perform algorithm-selection in combinatorial optimisation domains, particularly as they accommodate input representat...

Identifying Easy Instances to Improve Efficiency of ML Pipelines for Algorithm-Selection

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Renau, Q., & Hart, E. (2024, September)
Identifying Easy Instances to Improve Efficiency of ML Pipelines for Algorithm-Selection. Presented at 18th International Conference, PPSN 2024, Hagenberg, Austria
Algorithm-selection (AS) methods are essential in order to obtain the best performance from a portfolio of solvers over large sets of instances. However, many AS methods rely ...

Date


21 results

MAPFSI: Multiphysics Simulation of Magneto-Active Polymers and their Fluid-Structure Interaction

2025 - 2028
This project focuses on developing bespoke computational and analytical methods for studying and optimising the performance of Magnetoactive Polymers (MAPs) using state-of-the-art techniques in compu...
Funder: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council | Value: £992,992

Autonomous Quadrupedal Robots: Adaptable To The Unpredictable.

2024 - 2024
In controlled settings such as factories, robots are able to achieve many tasks efficiently and accurately. However, it is still a challenge to design robots that operate in unstructured, dynamic and ...
Funder: Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland | Value: £14,951

Swarmchestrate - Application-level Swarm-based Orchestration Across the Cloud-to-Things Continuum

2024 - 2026
The next-generation of intelligent cyber-physical and IoT systems powered by artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming an essential part of our environment. With the ever-growing number of intelligent...
Funder: European Commission | Value: £357,303

Hardware acceleration toolchain for medical diagnostic devices on skin conditions

2023 - 2025
Abstract: Artificial neural network (ANN) empowered machine vision in embedded platforms has huge potential to be used in clinic environments for medical diagnostics. However, cost-effective artificia...
Funder: Innovate UK | Value: £167,647

Marine Soundscapes and eDNA for Assessing Biodiversity and Functioning of Re-establishing European Flat Oyster Reefs, Ostrea edulis

2021 - 2025
Marine Soundscapes and eDNA for Assessing Biodiversity and Functioning of Re-establishing European Flat Oyster Reefs, Ostrea edulis’
Funder: Natural Environment Research Council | Value: £53,490

Keep Learning

2021 - 2025
The project proposes a novel architecture for designing optimisation systems that “keeps learning” when exposed to a continual stream of instances: these systems will autonomously adapt their compone...
Funder: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council | Value: £388,219

COG-MHEAR: Towards cognitively-inspired, 5G-IoT enabled multi-modal hearing aids

2021 - 2026
Embracing the multimodal nature of speech presents both opportunities and challenges for hearing assistive technology: on the one hand there are opportunities for the design of new multimodal audio-vi...
Funder: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council | Value: £3,258,999

Improving Science-Informed Crab Fisheries Management in Brazil

2020 - 2021
The project offers a unique opportunity to engage with, actively contribute to and learn from a UK-Brazilian applied research project investigating the reproductive rhythmicity of the mangrove crab Uc...
Funder: Natural Environment Research Council | Value: £2,900

Hyperheuristics for infrastructure system optimisation

2020 - 2020
Continuum Industries novel software tech allows engineers to automate their work and evaluate millions of possible combinations of design parameters. Primary application lies in linear infrastructure ...
Funder: Data Lab | Value: £19,599

Towards Guided Self-Organisation in Artificial Complex Systems: A Swarm Robotics Case Study

2020 - 2024
Swarm robotics refers to the design and coordination of large numbers of simple physical robots. Uses include environmental applications such as pollution monitoring in the oceans using aquatic robots...
Funder: Royal Society | Value: £11,500

Date


Qualification level

20 results

Towards Explainable AI Algorithms via Fitness Landscape Analysis in Evolutionary Computation

2023 - date
Kelly Hunter | Director of Studies: Dr Sarah L. Thomson | Second Supervisor: Dr Neil Urquhart

Assessing biodiversity and ecological status of European flat oyster beds using soundscape analysis, eDNA and visual surveys

2021 - date
Mr Magnus Janson | Director of Studies: Prof Karen Diele | Second Supervisor: Prof Emma Hart

Privacy preserving methods for Natural Language Processing

2020 - date
Richard Plant | Director of Studies: Dr Dimitra Gkatzia | Second Supervisor: Dr Valerio Giuffrida

Augmenting Neural Attention Models in Conversation Modelling

2019 - date
Grant Anderson | Director of Studies: Prof Emma Hart | Second Supervisor: Dr Dimitra Gkatzia

Evolving Robust Behaviours for Robotic Swarms with a Modular Design Approach

2019 - date
Kirsty Montague | Director of Studies: Prof Emma Hart | Second Supervisor: Prof Ben Paechter

From algorithm selection to generation using deep learning

2018 - 2022
Mhd Rateb Mhd Ziad Alissa | Director of Studies: Dr Kevin Sim | Second Supervisor: Prof Emma Hart

Application of evolutionary machine learning in metamorphic malware analysis and detection

2017 - 2021
Dr Kehinde Babaagba | Director of Studies: Dr Thomas Tan | Second Supervisor: Prof Emma Hart

Investigating and understanding the theoretical constructs and technical impactors on immersive dome user experience

2016 - 2019
Michael McKellar | Director of Studies: Dr Oli Mival | Second Supervisor: Prof David Benyon

The evolutionary iron law of oligarchy

2016 - 2020
Explaining the origin and the evolution of cooperation has been a major challenge in many scientific fields. One of the outstanding species are humans, who are ca...
Cedric Perret | Director of Studies: Dr Simon Powers | Second Supervisor: Prof Emma Hart

Visualisation techniques to facilitate argument exploration

2015 - 2020
Arguments are structures of premises and conclusions that underpin rational reasoning processes. Within complex knowledge domains, especially...
Dana Khartabil | Director of Studies: Dr Simon Wells | Second Supervisor: Prof Jessie Kennedy
13 results

Prof. Emma Hart invited to join Scottish Government Steering Group to develop an Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy for Scotland.

17 September 2019
Prof. Emma Hart has been invited by Minister Kate Forbes to join a Scottish Government Steering Group to develop an Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy for Scotland.

Researchers from Nature-Inspired Intelligent Systems group win Best Paper Award@GECCO 2019

17 July 2019
PhD student Mohamad Alissa with supervisors Dr Kevin Sim and Prof. Emma Hart won the Best Paper award in the ECOM track at GECCO 2019 in Prague for their paper: Algorithm Selection Using Deep Learnin...

Prof . Emma Hart gives interview "An Insider's Guide to Evolutionary Computation"

17 December 2018
Laura van Beers from ContactEngine, a London based company delivering software that enables its customers to proactively engage customers in AI-driven conversations to fulfil their business objective...

Prof. Emma Hart invited to talk at Scotland IS Software Engineering Leader's Forum to discuss SICSA's work on AI

20 November 2018
Prof. Emma Hart gave an invited talk at the monthly meet-up of the Scotland IS Software Engineering forum on behalf of the SICSA AI theme to describe the work taking place across Scottish Universities...

Prof. Emma Hart interviewed in new video released by Sentient AI to provide unique insights to business leaders on the growing applicability of evolutionary computation

14 August 2018
Sentient Technologies, a world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) products based on evolutionary computation, today announced a new video collection that provides unique insights to the burgeonin...

Prof. Emma Hart and Dr Kevin Sim win Bronze Award in International Humies competition for work on predicting wind damage in Forestry

19 July 2018
The Annual Humies prize is awarded at the International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation for human-competitive results that have been produced by any form of genetic and evolutionar...

Evolutionary Robotics Research Nominated for Best Paper Award

15 July 2018
Prof. Emma Hart, Dr Andreas Steyven and Prof. Ben Paechter have been nominated for a prestigious best paper award at the GECCO 18, Kyoto, Japan for new work in evolving a diverse team of swarm robot...

Prof. Emma Hart invited as a keynote speaker at IJCCI in Funchal, Madeira, November 2017

1 November 2017
The International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence brings together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested in the field of Computational Intelligence both from theoretical an...

CAVES researchers have 3 papers accepted at GECCO 2017

15 July 2017
Members of the CAVES research group have 3 papers accepted at the world's leading conference on Evolutionary Computing. GECCO 2017 will be held in Berlin from 15-19th July 2017. Accepted papers are: ...

Prof. Emma Hart interview with MIT Press on her new Editor-in-Chief role

17 February 2017
The New Year welcomed Emma Hart to the helm of Evolutionary Computation. She took over the role of Editor-in-Chief from Hans-Georg Beyer (who had assumed the role himself in 2010). Professor Hart ans...