Robohub.org
 

What would you research if you did not have to worry about grants?


by
17 June 2013



share this:

‘Bean-counting’ is a dull but necessary component of every grant proposal; it helps to keep our plans realistic, doable and accountable. But what if we weren’t tied to grants and budgets? Would it change the way we approach our work?

This month we asked the Robotics by Invitation panel to tell us what kind of research they would undertake if money weren’t an obstacle. Here’s what Mark Tilden and Illah Nourbakhsh have to say …

 

Illah Nourbakhsh

Illah Nourbaksh on “What would you research if you did not have to worry about grants?”

 Community empowerment through massive robotic sensing. There is no question we live in a world that is changing. Pollutants are changing the dynamics of the air we breathe, the water we drink and even the soil on which we live. Yet the power to measure pollution …

Read more →

 

Mark-Tilden

Mark Tilden on “What would you research if you did not have to worry about grants?”

 Well, I’m lucky enough to be a gentleman scientist, so I concurrently study problems on minimal dynamical control systems (optimizing performance to silicon ratios), power regeneration and efficiency, alien robot morphologies …

Read more →

 



tags: , , ,


RBI Editors

            AUAI is supported by:



Subscribe to Robohub newsletter on substack



Related posts :

Building and programming autonomous robots at the York Micromaze Hackathon

and   11 Sep 2026
From 25–27 August, UK RAS STEPS members came together for a three-day Micromaze Robot Hackathon.

Robotics roadmaps from around the world spotlight of the month: United States of America

US robotics researchers and industry are looking for a cohesive national robotics strategy.

Could robots help tackle loneliness? BBC’s Ann Droid raises questions about the future of care

  07 Sep 2026
While the series exaggerates what robots can currently do, some of the technology it depicts is already being tested.

Exploring the Moon will require rovers that can think for themselves – an upcoming NASA mission will test whether they can

  04 Sep 2026
NASA is planning to send three small rovers to the Moon to autonomously compute how to best explore a patch of ground.

Surviving the paper deluge: Notes from an ICRA panel on publishing, LLMs, and the future of peer review

Experts discuss peer-review challenges and possibilities for reshaping the process.

When expressive humanoid robots are awkward, people become wary – new brain study

  31 Aug 2026
People become more suspicious of a humanoid robot that makes errors, especially when the robot is an expressive conversation partner.

First 11 vs 11 humanoid soccer game played at RoboCup 2026

  28 Aug 2026
Watch highlights from this historic match.

How green is your robot? And other awkward questions

Robots clean rivers and sort waste, monitor ecosystems, and inspect renewable-energy infrastructure. But even the greenest robot has an environmental footprint.



AUAI is supported by:







Subscribe to Robohub newsletter on substack




 















©2026.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence