I am a Professor of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence and a Professor of Public Engagement in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield. My research has always had an interdisciplinary flavour and I have moved freely across disciplines from experimental to analytic. I have a doctorate in Psychology and a doctorate in Science as well as Fellowships from the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the British Computer Society, the Royal Institute of Navigation and the Royal Society of Arts and I am a Chartered Electrical Engineer and a Chartered Information Engineer. However my guiding passion has always been the study of mind. This is has taken me from Psychology to Cognitive Science to Linguistics to Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy to Computer Science, Engineering and Robotics. I am founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Connection Science and Editor of the journals AI review and Autonomous Robotics.

In the last 10 years I have become very involved in projects to take science and engineering out to the public. This has taken the form of large scale interactive museum exhibitions, robotics contest for children and adults (e.g. the National Chinese Creative Robotics Contests and the Egyptian National Schools AI and Robotics contest), public talks and discussions and many Television programmes (around 300).

Since 2004 I have been working as a Senior Media Fellow for the UK Economic and Social Science Research Council. This entails making the public, public institutions and policy makers aware of potential ethical problems related to emerging technologies, particularly in robotics. Robotics is now developing so rapidly in many areas such as the military, policing, child care, elder care and combining organic live with machines that we are in danger of sleep walking into a lot of social and ethical dangers.