Several members of the SLMC research group visited Tokyo, Japan for an extended research stay as part of the JST Moonshot collaboration researcher exchange program. PhD student Victor Leve worked on the deployment of the algorithms and motion planning algorithms developed at Edinburgh from March 17, 20205 on to the AIREC platform at Waseda University in collaboration with Dr Tamon Miyake and Sachiya Fujita. Dr Joao Moura joined on March 24th to help with experimental testing as well as exploring new collaborative opportunities with Kawada Robotics.
Professor Sethu Vijayakumar also joined from March 25th and the Edinburgh team gave several invited talks at Microsoft Research, Kawada Construction as well as Kawada Robotics headquarters in Tokyo.
Professor Vijayakumar was invited to deliver the special invited lecture 'KAIWA' at the HONDA Research Institute on April 16, 2025-- an event that the HRI-Japan organises for the purpose of acquiring diverse perspectives on new fields from world leading experts .
Finally, the visit was used as an opportunity to put together a consortium consisting of leading academics from the University of Tokyo, Nagoya and Waseda along with industrial support from Kawada Robotics, Kawada Construction, HONDA HRI-EU and several other partners in the UK along with the University of Cambridge to bid into a new collaborative research opportunity from UKRI and JST.
The team members also enjoyed the Tokyo hospitality and the excellent 'hanami' season including a boat trip along the Sumida river with the Tokyo Skytree backdrop.