Tuesday 18th August 2026 from 19:00 for 19:30
Abingdon United Football Club (Northcourt Rd, OX14 1PL, Abingdon)

At the UK Atomic Energy Authority, robots are an essential part of achieving fusion energy. What sort of robots do we use, why do we need them and how did we get here? This talk explores the robots we currently have at Culham, their surprisingly long history, and how we use them to enable fusion research. Outside of fusion energy, we will also cover our involvement in robotics around the world, spanning from systems that can inspect the Large Hadron Collider, will process material at the world’s largest neutron source, and navigate the hazardous environments of the traditional nuclear fission industry.

Speaker: Charles Birdsall

Charles Birdsall is a Remote Handling Operations Engineer at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, working on robotic operations at the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion energy experiment. With academic backgrounds in engineering physics, mechatronics, and robotics, they have recently contributed to the development of a training course on remote handling. They plan to begin PhD research in biologically inspired soft robotics for applications in challenging environments.