Patricia A. Vargas

Patricia Vargas is the Founder Director of the Robotics Laboratory and Associate Professor/Reader in Computer Science and Robotics at Heriot–Watt University in Edinburgh. She is an executive associate of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics. 

Originally from Brazil, she is currently working on a project that uses Neurorobotics to model Parkinson’s Disease. Her research interests include Evolutionary and Bio-inspired Robotics, Swarm Robotics, Computational Neuroscience, Machine Learning, Human–Robot Interaction, Rehabilitation Robotics and Neurorobotics. 

Dr Vargas was the leading editor of an MIT Press Book entitled “The Horizons of Evolutionary Robotics”, which was on the list of November 2014’s Best Sellers in Engineering and Technology. She has many academic publications. She was one of the 2016 list '25 Women in Robotics You Need to Know About' published in Robohub to mark Ada Lovelace Day

She also has a growing record of public appearances talking about robots, appearing live in the BBC Intelligent Machines week in 2015. She was also a speaker in the 2018 New Scientist Live, on Should Robots Have Rights?  and alongaide Ruth Aylett she appeared in the Scottish press in 2015.

Patricia' s latest book, co-authored with Ruth Aylett, LIVING WITH ROBOTS : WHAT EVERY ANXIOUS HUMAN NEEDS TO KNOW,  explores the threat, or lack therof, of robotics to our status quo and  will be published in 2021 in the UK and the US. 

Visit Patricia's website

Praise for LIVING WITH ROBOTS: 
‘A wonderfully informative and balanced account of the prospects for robotic AI technology. Extremely readable, and informed by a strong dose of common sense and a healthy aversion to hype, I can think of no other book that does such a detailed and thoughtful job in carefully explaining the many issues surrounding physically embodied autonomous AI systems. Heartily recommended for anyone with an interest in AI, from big tech CEOs to students alike.' Michael Wooldridge, Professor of Computer Science, University of Oxford