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Students form teams of ~4 to design, develop and demonstrate a robotic solution to a staff/industry posed challenge, using a combination of simulators and simple robotic platforms to deliver representative solutions under controlled experimental conditions. Each groups will be assigned a staff member based on their choice of challenge. The staff member will act as their advisor and represent the stakeholder perspective, with regular timetabled meetings to share progress and receive feedback. Student teams are expected to work independently between meetings to advance their projects.

Teams will manage a small budget, access to the relevant facilities, and develop their own strategies for system development and testing. Demonstrations must use existing educational robotic facilities at the university, with no major modifications to electronics and hardware. There is a significant emphasis on lab work and experimental data gathering.

Each team will produce an 8-page IEEE conference-style group report, a 15 minute presentation, and a 2 minute solution video. For students on the Robotics and Autonomous Systems MSc, these outputs must be presented at the MSc RAS mini-conference organised as part of the Robotics Fundamentals, Research Management, and Professional Development module.

Students form teams of ~4 to design, develop and demonstrate a robotic solution to a staff/industry posed challenge, using a combination of simulators and simple robotic platforms to deliver representative solutions under controlled experimental conditions. Each groups will be assigned a staff member based on their choice of challenge. The staff member will act as their advisor and represent the stakeholder perspective, with regular timetabled meetings to share progress and receive feedback. Student teams are expected to work independently between meetings to advance their projects.

Teams will manage a small budget, access to the relevant facilities, and develop their own strategies for system development and testing. Demonstrations must use existing educational robotic facilities at the university, with no major modifications to electronics and hardware. There is a significant emphasis on lab work and experimental data gathering.

Each team will produce an 8-page IEEE conference-style group report, a 15 minute presentation, and a 2 minute solution video. For students on the Robotics and Autonomous Systems MSc, these outputs must be presented at the MSc RAS mini-conference organised as part of the Robotics Fundamentals, Research Management, and Professional Development module.

This is an individual project based module where students critically review literature on the broader societal, regulatory, ethical and human-centred dimensions of a robotic domain of their choice, including safety and security.

Students will form peer groups with an assigned mentor and attend regular timetabled meetings to share and receive regular feedback on their progress. Students will also participate in a structured debate presenting different perspectives on a set aspect of robotics in society. Each student will produce an 8 page IEEE conference style individual policy paper and poster on their chosen topic.

For students on the MSc RAS, these may be presented at the Robotics and Autonomous Systems MSc mini-conference organised as part of the Robotics Fundamentals and Research Management module.

This is an individual project based module where students critically review literature on the broader societal, regulatory, ethical and human-centred dimensions of a robotic domain of their choice, including safety and security.

Students will form peer groups with an assigned mentor and attend regular timetabled meetings to share and receive regular feedback on their progress. Students will also participate in a structured debate presenting different perspectives on a set aspect of robotics in society. Each student will produce an 8 page IEEE conference style individual policy paper and poster on their chosen topic.

For students on the MSc RAS, these may be presented at the Robotics and Autonomous Systems MSc mini-conference organised as part of the Robotics Fundamentals and Research Management module.

This is an individual project based module where students critically review literature on the broader societal, regulatory, ethical and human-centred dimensions of a robotic domain of their choice, including safety and security.

Students will form peer groups with an assigned mentor and attend regular timetabled meetings to share and receive regular feedback on their progress. Students will also participate in a structured debate presenting different perspectives on a set aspect of robotics in society. Each student will produce an 8 page IEEE conference style individual policy paper and poster on their chosen topic.

For students on the MSc RAS, these may be presented at the Robotics and Autonomous Systems MSc mini-conference organised as part of the Robotics Fundamentals and Research Management module.

For most people even today Nero was one of the ‘bad’ emperors (he killed his mother), and Caligula was mad and depraved (he wanted to appoint his favourite horse as consul, and committed incest with his sisters); but the categorisation of emperors along moral lines is not a modern phenomenon. The emperor was without doubt the most important individual in the Roman world, the embodiment of the imperial project. His character, appearance, and actions were of fascination to contemporaries during and after his life. In this module we will survey Roman cultural responses to the office of emperor, and specifically the role played by prominent authors in creating a discourse on the individuals that occupied the imperial throne from its inception to Late Antiquity. We will also explore the role Imperial women played in validating the position of the emperor and as a means of undermining him.

Several genres of ‘political’ literature flourished under the empire, which took the emperor as their primary subject - biography, historiography, and speeches of praise and blame. Their rise may partly have been a response to the concentration of power in a single individual, but they also constantly engaged in evaluating emperors in traditional terms of virtue and vice, turning emperors into examples of good or bad rule for later holders of the office. Such texts, then, played an active role in the creation of an image of an emperor both during and after his reign. In this module we will survey key texts and images chronologically from the first to sixth centuries, and consider how and why each author interpreted individual emperors; how the ideal of the emperor developed during that time; when and in what way it was acceptable to criticise an emperor, or how risky this could be; to what extent an emperor could influence the creation of his positive image via contemporary orators. We will examine some case studies of the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ of emperors such as Claudius, Caligula, and Constantine, and in the process you will gain a chronological overview of the Roman imperial period. Finally, we’ll reflect on how modern depictions of emperors, in formal biographies and TV/film depictions, compare to the concerns articulated in ancient texts and images.

In 1831 the philosopher John Stuart Mill struggled to define the ‘Spirit’ of the nineteenth century. ‘It is’, he wrote, ‘an age of transition. Mankind have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones.’ If the nineteenth century was, as is sometimes assumed, an age of complacency and confidence, it was also an age of anxiety and openness, experimentation and invention. This module examines the literature of this age of transition. Students enrolled in this module will learn about the material history of reading and publication, and investigate nineteenth-century experiments with genre and literary mode. Throughout, we will emphasise the ways in which the fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction prose written in Britain between 1800 and 1900 sought to invent new forms of writing and styles of expression capable of coping with new doctrines, institutions, and ways of living.

In 1831 the philosopher John Stuart Mill struggled to define the ‘Spirit’ of the nineteenth century. ‘It is’, he wrote, ‘an age of transition. Mankind have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones.’ If the nineteenth century was, as is sometimes assumed, an age of complacency and confidence, it was also an age of anxiety and openness, experimentation and invention. This module examines the literature of this age of transition. Students enrolled in this module will learn about the material history of reading and publication, and investigate nineteenth-century experiments with genre and literary mode. Throughout, we will emphasise the ways in which the fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction prose written in Britain between 1800 and 1900 sought to invent new forms of writing and styles of expression capable of coping with new doctrines, institutions, and ways of living.

The ancient Roman elite was highly competitive, with families and individuals fighting for control and influence in all spheres of social and political life, in elections, in the law courts, in the arenas, theatres, and temples of Rome, and outside of the City in the provinces. We shall aim to understand Roman power: no small task, since the lexicon of ‘power’ in this period is so complex that no single English term does it justice. As well as studying the famous men who vied for supreme power at Rome during the late-republican civil wars – Sulla, Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony, et al. – you will learn about how power was institutionalised (in the senate, the law courts, and the popular assemblies), communicated (via speeches, monuments, and spectacles), transferred between generations (by wealth-based privileges and access to rhetorical education), and ultimately restricted (in the hands of a sole ruler, Augustus). By the end of the module, you will have received a thorough grounding in the political life of first-century-BCE Rome, its contemporaneous societal and cultural representation, and the indelible impression it has left on the historiographical record.

The ancient Roman elite was highly competitive, with families and individuals fighting for control and influence in all spheres of social and political life, in elections, in the law courts, in the arenas, theatres, and temples of Rome, and outside of the City in the provinces. We shall aim to understand Roman power: no small task, since the lexicon of ‘power’ in this period is so complex that no single English term does it justice. As well as studying the famous men who vied for supreme power at Rome during the late-republican civil wars – Sulla, Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony, et al. – you will learn about how power was institutionalised (in the senate, the law courts, and the popular assemblies), communicated (via speeches, monuments, and spectacles), transferred between generations (by wealth-based privileges and access to rhetorical education), and ultimately restricted (in the hands of a sole ruler, Augustus). By the end of the module, you will have received a thorough grounding in the political life of first-century-BCE Rome, its contemporaneous societal and cultural representation, and the indelible impression it has left on the historiographical record.