The ORCHID Project
As computation increasingly pervades the world around us, it will profoundly change the ways in which we work with computers. Rather than issuing instructions to passive machines, humans and software agents will continually and flexibly establish a range of collaborative relationships with one another, forming human-agent collectives (HACs) to meet their individual and collective goals.
This vision of people and computational agents operating at a global scale offers tremendous potential and, if realised correctly, will help us meet the key societal challenges of sustainability, inclusion, and safety that are core to our future.
To fully realise this vision, we require a principled science that allows us to reason about the computational and human aspects of these systems. Delivering this science is the core research objective of ORCHID. Specifically, we seek to establish the science that is needed to understand, build and apply HACs that symbiotically interleave human and computer systems to an unprecedented degree. With multi-disciplinary expertise in the areas of artificial intelligence, agent-based computing, machine learning, decentralised information systems, crowd sourcing, participatory systems, and ubiquitous computing, the ORCHID team aims to drive the science of HACs to real-world applications in the critical domains of the smart grid, disaster response and citizen science.
Latest posts
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May 15
Smart Meter Roll-outs delayed
“The deregulated structure of UK market is uniquely challenging for rapid and co-ordinated action in a large scale initiative like this and we believe that smart meter deployment in 65% of UK homes by 2015 is not possible,” said Mark England, Sentec’s CEO. “There is a great deal of work still to do to finalise [...] -
Apr 26
Consumers should be able to decide how much data smart meters surrender about their energy use
The plan to give consumers control is part of official guidelines for the mass rollout of smart meters – devices that show exactly how much electricity and gas is being used – to UK homes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17663679 -
Apr 11
Energy firms to ‘guarantee best deal’ on tariffs
Energy companies will be required to let customers know what their best deal is, in a move which ministers say could save households up to £100 a year. More at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17668573
Highlighted Publications
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Doctoral Training Programme
Offering fully funded scholarships to eligible applicants interested in building the next generation of intelligent information systems.
Learn more »Disaster response
We are developing systems that allow first responders, unmanned ground and aerial vehicles, and software agents to work effectively together.
Learn more about Disaster response »Smart Grid
We are developing novel algorithms and interfaces to optimise energy consumption and coordinate consumers and producers in the smart grid.
Learn more about Smart Grid »Citizen Science
We are developing approaches that make full use of the skills, preferences and capabilities of citizen scientists.
Learn more about Citizen Science »