Alan Winfield

Professor of Robot Ethics at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol, UK, Associate Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, and Visiting Professor at the University of York, Alan Winfield holds these positions. He graduated from the University of Hull with a Doctorate in Digital Communications in 1984, after which he co-founded and oversaw APD Communications Ltd. until he accepted a position at UWE, Bristol, in 1991. Winfield co-founded the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, and the nature and boundaries of robot intelligence are the subjects of his study.

He serves as an associate editor for Evolutionary Robotics and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence.

Winfield is interested in sharing discoveries and concepts in science, engineering, and technology. He oversaw the UK-wide Walking with Robots public engagement initiative, which won the 2010 Royal Academy of Engineering Rooke prize for engineering public outreach. In addition to being a member of the British Standards Institute working group on robot ethics, he was also a co-organizer and member of the 2010 EPSRC/AHRC working group that wrote the Principles of Robotics. He is an advocate for robot ethics.

In addition to giving several robotics lectures (including ones on robot ethics) to both academic and general audiences, Winfield has authored more than 200 papers, including "Robotics: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Specialties include public engagement, science communication, intelligent autonomous systems, robotics, artificial intelligence, and robot ethics.