The Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF) is the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) premier program designed to develop the next wave of world-class research and innovation leaders in academia and business.
Dr. Michael Mangan, who currently holds joint appointments as Senior Lecturer in Machine Learning and Robotics, at the University of Sheffield, and Research Director at Opteran Technologies has been recognised for his pioneering work revealing how tiny insect brains solve the problems still faced by current robots. In this fellowship, Dr Mangan will take this research to market with host Opteran Technologies - one of the UK’s most exciting deep-tech’s and leaders in the emerging field of natural intelligence.
Robots have the potential to solve many of the world’s most pressing issues, but they are still too unreliable, or expensive, for wide deployment. Every day we see tiny insects solving exactly these problems, and using a brain the size of a pinhead. Rather than try to ‘learn’ our way to a solution like modern AI approaches, I will reverse engineer these mini-brains to create similarly effective and efficient solutions.”
Dr Michael Mangan
Michael’s project, The Brain Beats Brawn’ will take a radical new approach to developing robotic ‘brains’. The project will reverse engineer the sensing and processing algorithms that insects use to expertly navigate complex environments across conditions. Combining methods from neuroscience, computer science, and robotics will allow him to understand key circuits in insect brains that underpin robust autonomy, before deploying algorithms in the next generation of robots that use natural, not artificial, intelligence.