A start-up based at the Harwell campus in Oxfordshire, founded in 2020, that builds artificial intelligence software and a robot called Strider for dangerous environments.
Oxford Dynamics builds robots and artificial intelligence for places where it is dangerous or hard for people to work. Its robot Strider is a rugged, semi-autonomous machine meant for sites contaminated by chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear hazards. It can pick up contaminated objects and seal them in containers, and it uses infrared, radar and lidar (a laser-based sensor) to move across rough ground. Its AI product, AVIS, which stands for A Very Intelligent System, is described as a generative AI platform that makes sense of text, images and sensor data from many sources quickly. Another product, SR-1, brings sensors and AVIS together so operators can make decisions faster.
The company says it aims to bring AI and robotics together so machines can sense, understand and act in complex, real-world environments. Co-founder Mike Lawton has spoken about deploying machines instead of people in life-threatening situations, and told the BBC the team hopes to build thousands of robots for hazardous work. The company was founded in 2020. Its founders named in press coverage are Shefali Sharma, Mike Lawton and Edward Jackson. Ms Sharma has said the technology could one day be adapted for other settings such as submarines or aircraft.
In the UK, Oxford Dynamics is based at the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory on the Harwell campus in Oxfordshire. UKRI reported that the site gives it access to research facilities and a place to test the robot on grass, concrete, gravel, steps and slopes. Built In London lists the company as headquartered in South Oxfordshire with two offices, and one job listing is in London. The same listing gives 36 employees, a figure that is third-party and undated. The Ministry of Defence funded Strider through a contract of around one million pounds, and the robot was meant for use by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
We found little published about the company's culture and have not invented any. Press coverage describes a small, ambitious engineering team working on defence and security problems and a company that moved from concept to a working robot quickly, which is the claim of the government department that praised it. A small company means each person tends to have a wide range of tasks. Its work with defence and security customers also means some roles may need security checks, but we have not seen this confirmed for specific jobs.
The people a company like this employs include robotics and mechanical engineers, embedded and software engineers, AI and machine learning engineers, test engineers who run the robot in the field, and people who work with customers in the public sector. Maths, physics, computer science and engineering are the usual starting points. One advertised role seen on a job board was a senior applied AI engineer. The company's own website and job pages are the place to check current openings.
Website: www.oxforddynamics.ai
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