Simon Harding

About

Simon Harding is a pioneering researcher working at the intersection of evolutionary computation, unconventional computing, and cognitive robotics. He is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking work in "Evolution In Materio," a radical approach that harnesses the intrinsic physical properties of unconventional materials — most notably liquid crystals — to evolve computational devices such as logic gates and real-time robot controllers. This work, which has accumulated over 75 citations across multiple publications, challenged the established practice of confining evolutionary algorithms to human-engineered electronic components, opening new frontiers in material-based computation. Harding also made significant contributions to Cartesian Genetic Programming, applying it to robot controller evolution. His later research shifted toward humanoid robotics and machine learning, where he developed sophisticated frameworks — including MoBeE and icVision — enabling robots like the iCub to autonomously learn object localization, hand detection, and spatial perception through vision. His work on inter-robot knowledge transfer, where one robotic arm teaches a humanoid to perceive shared workspace objects, is particularly notable for its elegance and practicality. With research spanning unconventional substrates to embodied cognition, Harding's career reflects a deep commitment to pushing the boundaries of how machines learn, adapt, and compute.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Evolution In Materio: Evolving Logic Gates in Liquid Crystal.

   41 citations · 2007
2. 2
   Evolution of Robot Controller Using Cartesian Genetic Programming

   34 citations · 2005
3. 3
   Evolution In Materio : A Real-Time Robot Controller in Liquid Crystal

   26 citations · 2006
4. 4
   The Modular Behavioral Environment for Humanoids and other Robots (MoBeE)

   18 citations · 2012
5. 5
   Transferring spatial perception between robots operating in a shared workspace

   17 citations · 2012
6. 6
   Learning Spatial Object Localization from Vision on a Humanoid Robot

   16 citations · 2012
7. 7
   An Integrated, Modular Framework for Computer Vision and Cognitive Robotics Research (icVision)

   14 citations · 2012
8. 8
   Humanoid learns to detect its own hands

   13 citations · 2013
9. 9
   Evolution In Materio: Investigating the Stability of Robot Controllers Evolved in Liquid Crystal

   10 citations · 2005
10. 10
    Autonomous learning of robust visual object detection and identification on a humanoid

    10 citations · 2012

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links