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Nick Hawes Associate Professor in Engineering Science

Professor

Nick Hawes BSc PhD

Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Tutorial Fellow at Pembroke College

Director of ORI

TEL: 01865 288728

Biography

Professor Nick Hawes completed a BSc (1999) and PhD (2004) in Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the University of Birmingham, before completing post-doctoral positions at MIT's Media Lab Europe in Dublin, and in the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham. From 2009, he led a research group around AI applied to robotics at Birmingham, progressing to the title of Reader in Autonomous Intelligent Robotics.

Nick moved to Oxford in September 2017, joining the Oxford Robotics Institute as an Associate Professor and Pembroke College as a Tutorial Fellow.

He became Director of the Oxford Robotics Institute within the Department of Engineering Science, in 2022. 

Awards and Achievements

Nick was selected to give the Lord Kelvin Award Lecture at the 2013 British Science Festival. This honour is given to an active researcher who has demonstrated outstanding communication skills to a general audience.

Research Interests

Nick’s research interests lie in the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to create intelligent, autonomous robots that can work with or for humans. He has worked on long-term autonomy for mobile robots; mixed initiative or shared autonomy between humans and robots; information-processing architectures for intelligent systems; the integration of AI planning techniques into a variety of robot systems; and the use of qualitative semantic and spatial representations to enable robots to reason about the possibilities for action in their worlds.

Research Groups

DPhil Opportunities

I am currently looking for DPhil students to join the GOALS lab at the Oxford Robotics Institute. DPhil topics will be in the area of long-term autonomy, the integration of learning and (probabilistic) planning, shared autonomy, or verification methods applied to robot behaviour.

Recent Publications

RAMBO-RL: robust adversarial model-based offline reinforcement learning

Rigter M, Lacerda B & Hawes N (2023), Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 35 (NeurIPS 2022)

Altmetric score is
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ramborlrobustad-2023/4,
  title={RAMBO-RL: robust adversarial model-based offline reinforcement learning},
  author={Rigter M, Lacerda B & Hawes N},
  booktitle={36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022)},
  year = "2023"
}

DITTO: Offline Imitation Learning with World Models

DeMoss B, Duckworth P, Hawes N & Posner I (2023)

Altmetric score is
BibTeX
@misc{dittoofflineimi-2023/2,
  title={DITTO: Offline Imitation Learning with World Models},
  author={DeMoss B, Duckworth P, Hawes N & Posner I},
  year = "2023"
}

Bayesian reinforcement learning for single-episode missions in partially unknown environments

Budd M, Duckworth P, Hawes N & Lacerda B (2022), Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL 2022)

Altmetric score is
BibTeX
@inproceedings{bayesianreinfor-2022/10,
  title={Bayesian reinforcement learning for single-episode missions in partially unknown environments},
  author={Budd M, Duckworth P, Hawes N & Lacerda B},
  booktitle={6th Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL 2022)},
  year = "2022"
}

Shared autonomy systems with stochastic operator models

Costen C, Rigter M, Lacerda B & Hawes N (2022), Proceedings of the 31st International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization (IJCAI 2022), 4614-4620

Altmetric score is
BibTeX View PDF
@inproceedings{sharedautonomys-2022/7,
  title={Shared autonomy systems with stochastic operator models},
  author={Costen C, Rigter M, Lacerda B & Hawes N},
  booktitle={31st International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization (IJCAI 2022)},
  pages={4614-4620},
  year = "2022"
}

Beta residuals: improving fault-tolerant control for sensory faults via bayesian inference and precision learning

Baioumy M, Hartemink W, Ferrari R & Hawes N (2022), IFAC-PapersOnLine, 55(6), 285-291

Altmetric score is
BibTeX View PDF
@inproceedings{betaresidualsim-2022/7,
  title={Beta residuals: improving fault-tolerant control for sensory faults via bayesian inference and precision learning},
  author={Baioumy M, Hartemink W, Ferrari R & Hawes N},
  pages={285-291},
  year = "2022"
}

Time-bounded large-scale mission planning under uncertainty for UV disinfection

Brudermüller L, Bhattacharyya R, Lacerda B & Hawes N (2022)

Altmetric score is
BibTeX
@inproceedings{timeboundedlarg-2022/6,
  title={Time-bounded large-scale mission planning under uncertainty for UV disinfection},
  author={Brudermüller L, Bhattacharyya R, Lacerda B & Hawes N},
  booktitle={PlanRob: ICAPS 2022 Workshop on Planning and Robotics},
  year = "2022"
}

Planning for Risk-Aversion and Expected Value in MDPs

Rigter M, Duckworth P, Lacerda B & Hawes N (2022), Proceedings International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, ICAPS, 32, 307-315

Altmetric score is
BibTeX View PDF
@inproceedings{planningforrisk-2022/6,
  title={Planning for Risk-Aversion and Expected Value in MDPs},
  author={Rigter M, Duckworth P, Lacerda B & Hawes N},
  pages={307-315},
  year = "2022"
}

Context-aware modelling for multi-robot systems under uncertainty

Street C, Lacerda B, Staniaszek M, Mühlig M & Hawes N (2022), Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2022)

Altmetric score is
BibTeX
@inproceedings{contextawaremod-2022/5,
  title={Context-aware modelling for multi-robot systems under uncertainty},
  author={Street C, Lacerda B, Staniaszek M, Mühlig M & Hawes N},
  booktitle={21st International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS) 2022},
  year = "2022"
}

Flexible estimation of biodiversity with short-range multispectral imaging in a temperate grassland

Jackson J, Lawson CS, Adelmant C, Huhtala E, Fernandes P et al. (2022)

Altmetric score is
BibTeX View PDF
@misc{flexibleestimat-2022/3,
  title={Flexible estimation of biodiversity with short-range multispectral imaging in a temperate grassland},
  author={Jackson J, Lawson CS, Adelmant C, Huhtala E, Fernandes P et al.},
  year = "2022"
}

Risk-aware motion planning in partially known environments

Hawes N, Barbosa FS, Lacerda B, Duckworth P & Tumova J (2022), Proceedings of the 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2021), 5220-5226

Altmetric score is
BibTeX View PDF
@inproceedings{riskawaremotion-2022/2,
  title={Risk-aware motion planning in partially known environments},
  author={Hawes N, Barbosa FS, Lacerda B, Duckworth P & Tumova J},
  booktitle={60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2021)},
  pages={5220-5226},
  year = "2022"
}
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