BOOK NOW
Today, the world is captivated by cognitive AI applications such as large language models. But what will it take to bring the benefits of AI into the messy, diverse and safety-critical physical world? Robotics and autonomous systems must deal with open-ended environments, irreversible physical actions, and deployment economics that look very different from pure software.
In this talk, I will outline the frontier challenges and opportunities in embodying AI in the real world, drawing on our journey building Wayve. Originating from research on deep learning for scene understanding at the University of Cambridge, Wayve has spent the last decade developing Embodied Intelligence for autonomous driving. Our technology has been demonstrated across more than 500 cities in Europe, North America and Asia, and will soon be deployed with major automakers such as Nissan and fleet partners like Uber.
I will share the key technical ideas, system-level lessons, and open problems that must be solved to make Embodied AI a safe, scalable and economically viable reality.
Alex co-founded Wayve in 2017 to reimagine autonomous mobility through embodied intelligence. From his award-winning research at the University of Cambridge, he seized the opportunity to use deep learning to pioneer an entirely new way to solve self-driving. He showed for the first time that it was possible to teach a machine to understand where it is and what’s around it and then give it the intelligence to make its own decisions based on what it sees with computer vision. Under Alex’s leadership, Wayve is fast becoming one of the most exciting companies in the autonomous vehicle industry. Alex attended Cambridge as a Woolf Fisher Scholar, was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 2017, and his PhD research was awarded the 2018 BMVA Prize and 2019 ELLIS Prize. His academic work has been highly cited within the machine learning and robotics community. Alex has been awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal for outstanding contribution to UK engineering innovation, appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to artificial intelligence, and named among MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 for his pioneering work in Embodied AI and autonomous driving.
The entrance to the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry can be found at the side of the Scott Polar Research Institute, opposite the boat. The Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre is located directly in the entrance as you enter the building.
Subscribe to our lectures on talks.cam
Please note: talks.cam will be retired on July 1, 2026, and replaced with a new system called EventsAir.
From Darwin’s paper on evolution to the development of stem cell research, publications from the Society continue to shape the scientific landscape.
Mathematical Proceedings is one of the few high-quality journals publishing original research papers that cover the whole range of pure and applied mathematics, theoretical physics and statistics.
Biological Reviews covers the entire range of the biological sciences, presenting several review articles per issue. Although scholarly and with extensive bibliographies, the articles are aimed at non-specialist biologists as well as researchers in the field.
The Spirit of Inquiry celebrates the 200th anniversary of the remarkable Cambridge Philosophical Society and brings to life the many remarkable episodes and illustrious figures associated with the Society, including Adam Sedgwick, Mary Somerville, Charles Darwin, and Lawrence Bragg.
Become a Fellow of the Society and enjoy the benefits that membership brings. Membership costs £20 per year.
Registered address:17 Mill LaneCambridgeCB2 1RXUnited Kingdom
Business address:6A King's ParadeCambridgeCB2 1SJUnited Kingdom
Office hours at the business address:Monday and Thursday: 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm.
Please contact philosoc@group.cam.ac.uk to agree a timing before visiting the office.