Kevin Warwick

Kevin Warwick (born 9 February 1954) is an English engineer and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Coventry University.

He is known for his studies on direct interfaces between computer systems and the human nervous system, and has also done research concerning robotics.

Kevin Warwick was born in 1954 in Keresley, Coventry, England, and was raised in the nearby village of Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwickshire.

His family attended a Methodist church but soon he began doubting the existence of God.

He attended Lawrence Sheriff School in Rugby, Warwickshire, where he was a contemporary of actor Arthur Bostrom.

He left school at the age of 16 to start an apprenticeship with British Telecom.

In 1976, he was granted his first degree at Aston University, followed by a PhD degree and a research job at Imperial College London.

In 2000, Warwick presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, entitled The Rise of Robots.

Warwick performs research in artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering, control systems and robotics.

Much of Warwick's early research was in the area of discrete time adaptive control.

He introduced the first state space based self-tuning controller and unified discrete time state space representations of ARMA models.

He has also contributed to mathematics, power engineering and manufacturing production machinery.

Warwick directed a research project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which investigated the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to suitably stimulate and translate patterns of electrical activity from living cultured neural networks to use the networks for the control of mobile robots.

Hence the behaviour process for each robot was effectively provided by a biological brain.

Previously, Warwick helped to develop a genetic algorithm named Gershwyn, which was able to exhibit creativity in producing popular songs, learning what makes a hit record by listening to examples of previous successful songs.

Gershwyn appeared on BBC's Tomorrow's World, having been successfully used to mix music for Manus, a group consisting of the four younger brothers of Elvis Costello.

Another of Warwick's projects involving AI was the robot head, Morgui.

The head, which contained five "senses" (vision, sound, infrared, ultrasound and radar), was used to investigate sensor data fusion.

It was X-rated by the University of Reading Research and Ethics Committee due to its image storage capabilities—anyone under the age of 18 who wished to interact with the robot had to obtain parental approval.

Warwick has very outspoken opinions about the future, particularly with respect to AI and its effect on the human species.

He argues that humanity will need to use technology to enhance itself to avoid being overtaken by machines.

He states that many human limitations, such as sensorimotor abilities, can be outperformed by machines, and he has said on record that he wants to gain these abilities: "There is no way I want to stay a mere human."

Warwick directed the University of Reading team in a number of European Community projects such as: FIDIS (Future of Identity in the Information Society), researching the future of identity; and ETHICBOTS and RoboLaw, both of which considered the ethical aspects of robots and cyborgs.

Warwick's topics of interest have many ethical implications, some due to his human enhancement experiments.

The ethical dilemmas of his research are used by the Institute of Physics as a case study for schoolchildren and science teachers as a part of their formal Advanced level and GCSE studies.

His work has also been discussed by the USA President's Council on Bioethics and the USA President's Panel on Forward Engagements.

He is a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party on Novel Neurotechnologies.

Along with Tipu Aziz and his team at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, and John Stein of the University of Oxford, Warwick is helping to design the next generation of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease.

Instead of stimulating the brain all the time, the goal is for the device to predict when stimulation is needed and to apply the signals prior to any tremors occurring, thereby stopping tremors before they start.

Recent results have also shown that it is possible to identify different types of Parkinson's Disease.

Warwick has directed a number of projects intended to interest schoolchildren in the technology with which he is involved.

In 2000, he received the EPSRC Millennium Award for his Schools Robot League.

He is Visiting Professor at the Czech Technical University in Prague, the University of Strathclyde, Bournemouth University, and the University of Reading, and in 2004 he was Senior Beckman Fellow at the University of Illinois in the United States.

He is also on the Advisory Boards of the Instinctive Computing Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Centre for Intermedia at the University of Exeter.

By the age of 40, Warwick had been awarded a DSc degree by both Imperial College London and the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, for his research output in two entirely unrelated areas.

In 2007, 16 school teams were involved in a project to design a humanoid robot to dance and then complete an assault course, with the final competition staged at the Science Museum, London.

The project, entitled 'Androids Advance' was funded by EPSRC and was presented as a news item by Chinese television.

He has received the IET Achievement Medal, the IET Mountbatten Medal, and in 2011 the Ellison-Cliffe Medal from the Royal Society of Medicine.

He took up positions at Somerville College in Oxford, Newcastle University, the University of Warwick, and the University of Reading, before relocating to Coventry University in 2014.

Warwick is a Chartered Engineer (CEng), a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET) and a Fellow of the City and Guilds of London Institute (FCGI).