Department of Computer Science, Royal Holloway University of London
Email: sara.bernardini@rhul.ac.uk
Digital Ocean
National Oceanography Centre
Email: sara.bernardini@noc.ac.uk
Projects
MIMRee
MIMRee (Multi-Platform Inspection, Maintenance & Repair in Extreme Environments) is a £4.2m project funded by Innovate UK and industry and focuses on building the world's first fully autonomous and comprehensive multi-robotic platform for the inspection, maintenance and repair of offshore wind farms. In this project, I am in charge of the planning and coordination of the various robotic assets, which include drones, an autonomous surface vessel, a climbing inspection and maintenance robot and multi-functional arm. I am also responsible for the human-robot interface.
Prometheus
Prometheus is a £2m project funded by Innovate UK and industry and focuses on building an intelligent reconfigurable drone for the exploration of confined spaces, such as underground mines. In this project, I am in charge of the intelligent exploration and autonomous navigation of the drone.
Connect-R
Connect-R is a £6M project funded by Innovate UK and industry and focuses on developing a multi-robot system that self-assembles into a stable structure in a target environment so that other robots can traverse the structure to reach specific points efficiently. Target domains are nuclear plants, oil and gas facilities and other extreme environments. In this project, I am in charge of the planning algorithms behind the self-assembling behaviour of the robotic units that compose the structure.
NZOC
https://projects.noc.ac.uk/nzoc/
NZOC (Net Zero Oceanographic Capability) is a £250k scoping project funded by NERC to inform planning for the future low carbon oceanographic research capability in line with UKRI’s objectives of becoming a net-zero organisation by 2040. Together with Dr Maaten Furlong (NOC), I am in charge of WP4, which focuses on Future Marine Autonomous Systems.
source: Glynn Gorick and the NeXOS project
SMaILE
SMaILE (Simple Methods for AI Learning and Education) is a £1m project funded by Compagnia di San Paolo (Italy). The goal of the SMaILE project is to make AI concepts accessible to a wide spectrum of young adults and children and empower them to understand AI in-depth as well as to create AI technology. This project is a collaboration with Politecnico di Torino and University of Turin. My role is the creation of the SMaILEApp, an interactive app to learn AI and unleash creativity.
Game Theory for Large Scale Hybrid Decision Making
This is a £30k project funded by the Leverhulme Trust and focuses on the use of network game theory and learning dynamics as powerful tools to devise distributed algorithms to solve multi-agent decision problems, such as constraint satisfaction, global optimisation and statistical inference. The project is in collaboration with Prof Fabio Fagnani at Politecnico di Torino.
