DYSON GIVES GLIMPSE OF SECRET ROBOT PROTOTYPES FOR THE HOME

Wiltshire-based Dyson has revealed its first prototype household robot which can even pick up teddies and help put away the washing up.

The big reveal, at an International Robotics Conference in the USA in May, was also to help attract the brightest in the field of robotics to join its rapidly growing team.

Dyson is halfway through its largest engineering recruitment drive ever.

More than 2,000 people have joined the company this year, of which 50 per cent are engineers, scientists, and coders.

It wants to recruit 250 robotics engineers across disciplines including computer vision, machine learning, sensors and mechatronics and expects to hire 700 more over the next five years.

The plan is to create the UK’s largest, most advanced, robotics centre at Hullavington Airfield in Wiltshire and to bring the technology into domestic homes by the end of the decade.

New recruits will be based at Hullavington near Malmesbury, a new London laboratory close to the Dyson Robotics Lab at Imperial College, and in Singapore. Dyson has been refitting one of the main aircraft hangars at Hullavington Airfield to prepare for 250 roboticists to move into their new home.

The company bought the 500-acre former RAF airfield in 2017 and then spent more than £200 million restoring the hangars. Its latest robotics makeover is the next stage in Dyson’s £2.75 billion new technologies and facilities investment plan – £600 million will be spent this year.

Jake Dyson, Chief Engineer at Dyson, said: “This is a big bet on future robotic technology that will drive research across the whole of Dyson, in areas including mechanical engineering, vision systems, machine learning and energy storage. We need the very best people in the world to come and join us now.”

Until now, Dyson’s robots have been floor-based vacuum cleaners – the first of which, the DC06, was designed 20 years ago.

Dyson isn’t the only company innovating in the household robot space. Amazon’s Astra won’t wash the dishes but will keep an eye inside your home when you’re out, or remotely check on elderly relatives. Then there’s the Gita, a cargocarrying robot which will trundle along the pavement behind you carrying your shopping bags. Or how about a robotic

Thomas Beecham was born at Beecham Cottage, Curbridge near Oxford in 1820.

His father, Joseph Beecham, was a shepherd and Thomas was sent out to tend sheep at the age of eight.

According to the Oxfordshire Blue Plaque Society, at the age of 11 he moved to

Cropredy, north of Banbury, where he worked as a shepherd at Lawn Farm.

Here he began to make herbal pills based on his observations of plants and animals. In 1847 he moved north, to Wigan, where wages were higher and occupational diseases more common, and opened a chemist’s shop where he manufactured his pills.

He moved again, to St Helens, in 1859 and began a concerted marketing effort. It worked and he built a thriving business.

The society says in its fascinating research:

“Thomas Beecham’s personal life was turbulent. He is said to have had a certain sexual magnetism, was married three times and was a persistent philanderer. His first marriage produced two sons and two daughters and there were other illegitimate children. He maintained a rustic style of dress: an antique frock coat, paper collar, and hard round hat, his voluminous trousers hitched well up to the chest, as remembered by his grandson, the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham.”

Joseph Beecham opened a factory in St Helens in 1886, taking the firm to new heights of wealth and fame. It was the first factory solely built to manufacture medicines. His son, also Joseph, joined him in the 1860s and he gradually took over running the business.

Joseph senior died in 1907 but the company prospered, acquiring other brands and then ventured into antibiotics and pharmaceuticals which resulted in takeovers. In 1989 the name was still visible in SmithKlineBeecham and finally submerged in 2000 in the new company GlaxoSmithKline.

Royal Agricultural University supports Ukrainian students

Cirencester’s Royal Agricultural University has twinned with Sumy National Agrarian University (SNAU) and launched an online fundraiser to help support the Ukrainian university.

Sumy, and the surrounding area, was attacked by Russian forces in February.

University, said: “As a university, we are painfully aware that the education of hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians has come to a very sudden halt.” bartender (who presumably won’t be counting the number of drinks its customers order)? Richtech Robotics, based in the USA, has developed a double-handed robot barman named Adam. Adam can be assigned multiple tasks such as drink and food preparation – can it mix an espresso martini while slicing lemon for a G&T we wonder?

Ukraine was the world’s sixth-largest exporter of wheat in 2021 with a 10 per cent share of the market. It is also one of the world’s top exporters of barley, sunflower seeds and oil.

Neil Ravenscroft, Deputy ViceChancellor of the Royal Agricultural

The partnership will provide humanitarian support. The initiative also plans to provide access to databases and libraries, collaborative online international learning, cultural and scientific events for students from both organisations, a partnership for research collaboration, and potential scholarships for academics and students to travel to the UK to continue their studies.