The Human-Centred AI Lab · University of Essex

AI that acts. AI you can trust. AI that works with people.

Physical AI, AI alignment and human–AI teaming. The Lab is part of the Centre for Computational Intelligence.

Research Education

A depth camera mounted on a small tripod — Perception

An NVIDIA module on an edge-computing board — Edge AI

Close view of a patterned semiconductor wafer — Inspection

A person wearing an EEG cap takes part in a brain–computer interface experiment — Human signals

The laboratory

Research and teaching, held in the same place.

People are learning to use AI. The harder problems are the ones that follow: systems that perceive and act in the world, models that can be questioned and audited, and machines that work with a person rather than around them.

Those three problems are the Lab’s pillars. The same researchers who publish on them also teach them, to students at Essex and to organisations that need the capability in their own workforce. The Lab manages and hosts Enlighten Journey, its educational platform.

University of Essex Centre for Computational Intelligence, Colchester.
Three pillars Physical AI, AI alignment and explainable AI, and human–AI teaming.
Education Courses, micro-credentials, train-the-trainer work and joint research with partners.
Enlighten Journey The educational platform managed and hosted by the Lab.

The three pillars

What the Lab works on

Full research pages

A LiDAR point cloud of a street intersection

Physical AI

From seeing to doing

Cobots and autonomous robots that work safely beside people.
Large vision models and fusion of camera, LiDAR and thermal sensing.
Edge AI, including FPGA, where the decision cannot wait.
From predicting a failure to adjusting the operation that would cause it.

A semiconductor wafer under inspection lighting

AI alignment and XAI

From black box to glass box

Models that explain a decision and state their own uncertainty.
People who can question, audit and govern an AI system, not only use it.
Privacy-preserving analytics, and forensics for synthetic signals.
Roles in which a person approves, overrides or escalates.

EEG traces on a monitor during a brain–computer interface experiment

Human–AI teaming

From tools to teammates

Fatigue and cognitive load read from eye and neural signals.
Gaze on everyday devices, and hands-free neural interfaces.
Exoskeletons and rehabilitation robotics that widen who can do the work.
Systems designed to hand the decision back.

Photographs are illustrative and are credited on the contact page. They are not pictures of the Lab’s own facilities.

Education

Taught by the people who do the research.

The Lab teaches the same frontier material it publishes on. A programme can be an executive briefing, a short course, a micro-credential, a train-the-trainer cohort, or a joint research project of six to twenty-four months.

It can run at a partner’s site, at Essex, or as a blend of the two.

Executive briefing Short course Micro-credential Train-the-trainer Joint R&D

Education at the Lab

Enlighten Journey