Professor Tony Prescott
director, Sheffield Robotics; professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Sheffield; director of Research, Consequential Robotics

Tony Prescott is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Sheffield, Director of Sheffield Robotics, a cross-disciplinary research institute with over one hundred researchers, and the co-creator of the animal-like robots Scratchbot, Shrewbot and MiRo.  His background mixes psychology and brain theory with robotics and AI, and his research aims at answering questions about human nature by creating synthetic entities with human-like capacities such as perception, memory, emotion and sense of self.  He co-founded the International Living Machines conference series and recently launched Consequential Robotics a UK start-up developing assistive and companion robots. In 2015 he presented at the Royal College of Art’s ‘Fear of Missing Out’, and at Tencent’s ‘Way to Evolve’ conference on human relationships with robots.  With recent funding from the AHRC and the EU Framework 7 programme he is also exploring the societal and cultural impacts of future robotic, AI, virtual reality and telepresence technologies. His research has been covered by the major news media including the BBC, CNN, Discovery Channel, Science Magazine and New Scientist.

Follow Tony on Twitter: @tonyjprescott

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