Innovative technologies developed by computer scientists at the University of Southampton will be unveiled in an online edition of the world’s largest and most influential technology show, CES 2021.

Postgraduate researchers Iris Kramer and Ryan Beal will demonstrate two AI-based startups based on cutting-edge Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) research across the four-day show, running from Monday 11th to Thursday 14th January.

ArchAI, founded by Iris Kramer in the Vision, Learning and Control Group, uses deep-learning software to automatically detect unknown archaeological sites.

Sentient Sports, co-founded by Ryan Beal in the Agents, Interaction and Complexity (AIC) Group, uses artificial intelligence to help sports managers build the best teams for the world’s top leagues.

The ECS entrepreneurs are among two of eight startups exhibiting at CES 2021 through Future Worlds, the on-campus startup accelerator at the University of Southampton.

CES usually takes place in Las Vegas and attracts over 170,000 visitors who flock to see the newest technology being showcased by the 4,000+ tech firms in attendance. 2021 sees the event go all-digital, taking the global reach of CES wider than ever before.

ArchAI uses technology developed during Iris’ PhD and previous degree in archaeology. She combines the two domains to deliver rapid results and improved outcomes for the construction industry by automatically detecting archaeological sites on Earth Observation data.

"By using our technology over conventional techniques, developers could save tens of thousands in costs, as well as months of time that would be spent surveying land pre-development," Iris says. "Going forward there are wide ranging environmental challenges globally that our world-first technology can address."

Sentient Sports, together with their partner AI Abacus, are working with decision makers at leading clubs across Europe to help aid with recruitment.

The startup's solution uses research-developed algorithms to boost football managers' decision-making and scouting process for buying and selling players, which promises to drive up footballing and financial results.

"Football, like other sports, has huge amounts of data associated with it," Ryan says. "Our algorithms can assess a number of qualities, including the suitability of a player to the style of a new team, to optimise the decision-making and scouting process when buying and selling players."

Future Worlds is returning to CES for a sixth consecutive year as the UK's only exhibiting university.

Current University of Southampton startups being exhibited at CES 2021 also include Absolar, an AI-powered software that simulates solar radiation to inform renewable energy decisions, Aquark Technologies, a revolutionary miniaturised cold atom chip for quantum hardware, and Inpulse, smart clothing to correct muscle imbalances and improve sports performance.

They will be joined by three University of Southampton startups previously supported by Future Worlds. Aura Vision, co-founded by former ECS postgraduate researchers Daniel Martinho-Corbishley and Jaime Lomeli, offers a revolutionary in-store analytics for offline retailers using existing security cameras. BOON, co-founded by Electronic Engineering graduates Dylan Grey and Mike Oakley, creates privacy-first personalised experiences for online retailers. Emitwise, founded by Acoustical Engineering graduate Mauro Cozzi, is helping speed up the carbon accounting and reporting process for environmentally-conscious companies.

Ben Clark, Future Worlds Director, says: "We are very excited as Southampton steps up as the only university representing the UK at CES for a sixth consecutive year. The startups we have selected to exhibit are inspirational future leaders in their field, destined to make a huge change in the world of AI and quantum.

"More startups than ever before are exhibiting with Future Worlds at this year's CES, reflecting the immeasurable vision, talent and determination to push through the pandemic to help create a more sustainable, connected and healthy world to come."

AI systems will be re-designed to value people as more than passive providers of data in a prestigious new Turing Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Fellowship at the University of Southampton.

The novel research, led by Electronics and Computer Science's Dr Sebastian Stein, will create AI systems that are aware of citizens' preferences and act to maximise the benefit to society.

In these systems, citizens are supported by trusted personal software agents that learn an individual’s preferences. Importantly, rather than share this data with a centralised system, the AI agents keep it safe on private smart devices and only use it in their owners' interests.

Over the next five years, the £1.4m fellowship will develop and trial citizen-centric AI systems in a range of application areas, such as smart home energy management, on-demand mobility and disaster response, including for the provision of advice and medical support during epidemics like COVID-19.

Dr Stein, of the Agents, Interaction and Complexity (AIC) research group, says: "AI systems are increasingly used to support and often automate decision-making on an unprecedented scale. Such AI systems can draw on a vast range of data sources to make fast, efficient, data-driven decisions to address important societal challenges and potentially benefit millions of people.

"However, building AI systems on such a large and pervasive scale raises a range of important challenges. First, these systems may need access to relevant information from people, such as health-related data, which raises privacy issues and may also encourage people to misrepresent their requirements for personal benefit. Furthermore, the systems must be trusted to act in a manner that aligns with society’s ethical values. This includes the minimisation of discrimination and the need to make equitable decisions.

"Novel approaches are needed to build AI systems that are trusted by citizens, that are inclusive and that achieve their goals effectively. To enable this, citizens must be viewed as first-class agents at the centre of AI systems, rather than as passive data sources."

The new vision for AI systems will be achieved by developing techniques that learn the preferences, needs and constraints of individuals to provide personalised services, incentivise socially-beneficial behaviour changes, make choices that are fair, inclusive and equitable, and provide explanations for these decisions.

The Southampton team will draw upon a unique combination of research in multi-agent systems, mechanism design, human-agent interaction and responsible AI.

Dr Stein will work with a range of high-profile stakeholders over the duration of the fellowship. This will include citizen end-users, to ensure the research aligns with their needs and values, as well as industrial partners, to put the research into practice.

Specifically, collaboration with EA Technology and Energy Systems Catapult will generate incentive-aware smart charging mechanisms for electric vehicles. Meanwhile, work with partners including Siemens Mobility, Thales and Connected Places Catapult will develop new approaches for trusted on-demand mobility. Within the Southampton region, the fellowship will engage with the Fawley Waterside development to work on citizen-centric solutions to smart energy and transportation.

The team will also work with Dstl to create disaster response applications that use crowdsourced intelligence from citizens to provide situational awareness, track the spread of infectious diseases or issue guidance to citizens. Further studies with Dstl and Thales will explore applications in national security and policing, and joint work with UTU Technologies will investigate how citizens can share their preferences and recommendations with trusted peers while retaining control over what data is shared and with whom.

Finally, with IBM Research, Dr Stein will develop new explainability and fairness tools, and integrate these with their existing open source frameworks.

Turing Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Fellowships, named after AI pioneer Alan Turing, are supported by a £20 million government investment in AI being delivered by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), in partnership with the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, Office for AI and the Alan Turing Institute.

Science Minister, Amanda Solloway, says: "The UK is the birthplace of artificial intelligence and we therefore have a duty to equip the next generation of Alan Turings, like Southampton's Dr Sebastian Stein, with the tools that will keep the UK at the forefront of this remarkable technological innovation. "The inspiring AI project we are backing today to will help inform UK citizens in their decision making - from managing their energy needs to advising which mode of transport to take - transforming the way we live and work, while cementing the UK's status as a world leader in AI and data."

Digital Minister, Caroline Dinenage, says: "The UK is a nation of innovators and this government investment will help our talented academics use cutting-edge technology to improve people's daily lives - from delivering better disease diagnosis to managing our energy needs."

The University of Southampton has placed Machine Intelligence at the centre of its research activities for more than 20 years and has generated over £50m of funding for associated technologies in the last 10 years across 30 medium to large projects. Southampton draws together researchers and practitioners through its Centre for Machine Intelligence, trains the next generation of AI researchers via its UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Machine Intelligence for Nano- Electronic Devices and Systems (MINDS), and was recently chosen to host the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) Hub.

Southampton is also a leading member of the UK national Alan Turing Institute with activities co-ordinated by the University’s Web Science Institute.

Researchers at the University of Southampton are investigating how to coordinate swarms of up to 100 autonomous vehicles that can work with a limited number of human operators.

Electronics and Computer Science's Professor Sarvapali Ramchurn and Dr Danesh Tarapore are identifying the challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms automating robot swarms in a novel Pilot Project funded by The Alan Turing Institute.

The AI experts are working with industry partners at Thales and Dstl to shape the future of the technology's design to enable swarms to have flexible autonomy in dynamic and uncertain environments.

Aerial, ground and underwater drones are being increasingly used in areas such as emergency response, ocean floor surveying, and product delivery, with operations currently relying on a human operator controlling one vehicle at a time.

In the coming years, it is anticipated that robots will need to be deployed in large numbers and with fewer operators to make the best use of their capabilities. Teams of operators might also collaborate to deploy their robots simultaneously for different objectives, such as fire and rescue services and non-governmental organisations responding to a natural disaster.

Professor Ramchurn, Director of the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub, says: "AI algorithms have been developed to automate the actions of robot swarms in a cohesive and coordinated way. However, it has been shown that in some situations operators are overwhelmed or do not trust information coming from robots and therefore override them. By doing so, they may cause the system to fail. In other situations, completely relying on automation can mean obvious errors are not noticed in the system.

"To manage such large fleets in a safe manner, there need to be shifts in autonomy levels to allow humans to take corrective action. Understanding when such shifts should occur without losing out on the fault-tolerance benefits of a decentralised swarm, what levels of workload these shifts induce, and how the team of operators should enact such shifts are key questions that need to be addressed."

The Turing-sponsored Pilot Project is developing the fundamental elements needed for research into the design of swarm coordination systems that can be flexibly controlled by human operators.

Previous work on supervisory control interfaces and multi-robot coordination has typically considered military applications with less than five drones and very simple scheduling models.

In contrast, the latest Southampton research is considering robots with more advanced coordination capabilities, such as modelling their environment, autonomously planning paths and allocating tasks to each other. These parameters should enable deployments of up to 100 robots with minimal human oversight.

One approach being evaluated for such swarms is for the robots to intelligently query the operator to sample and select suitable 'plays' designed to execute assigned sub-tasks. The swarm may also suggest characteristics of new plays depending on perceived changes in the environment, or seek to upgrade/downgrade the level of autonomy depending on the perceived uncertainty.