Ex-student urges people to join robot revolution
AFORMER King’s student turned robotics expert dropped in at his old school to teach students about ‘the fourth industrial revolution’.
Jonathan Aitken, 35, is now a Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield in the Department of Automatic Controls and Systems Engineering. His research specialises in the deployment of field robotics in dangerous and hazardous environments.
As well as lecturing third year students, his expertise has helped Britain become a world leader in the high end hazardous environment sector such as the nuclear decommissioning and off-shore engineering, where the most complex and creative solutions are sought.
Jonathan was born and brought up in Poynton and went from King’s to the University of York to study Electronic Engineering, ultimately earning a PhD in artificial intelligence techniques for fault detection in collaborative systems.
He said: “Society should not be scared of robotics but embrace the change and the new opportunities.
“We are now in the fourth industrial revolution where manufacturing is using big data and robotics for the first time but we are still going to need people.
“People are our most valuable resource, we provide the creativity whereas robotics should take over the boring, repetitive, mundane, dangerous and dirty tasks. We don’t just need computer scientists or electronic engineers; the robotics industry needs to develop a multi-disciplinary environment and call on the expertise of psychologists, graphic designers, mathematicians among many other disciplines to get new and exciting products to the market place.
“Britain is probably slightly behind Europe in the use of robotics in general manufacture though small to medium sized business are increasingly looking to use robotics alongside their existing workforce, while the biggest companies are exploring greater automation. However, we do lead the world in the more demanding hazardous environment sector, where more intelligent solutions are needed.”
Jim Street, King’s School’s current head of Science, said: “Over 50 students from our Sixth Form and both our Girls’ and Boys’ Divisions who are particularly interested in careers in the STEM subjects of Science, Technology, Mathematics and Engineering were inspired by Dr Aitken’s lecture, learning so much about tomorrow’s world and their own futures.