London pips other European cities to host robotics and AI conference

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s (RAS) International Conference on Robotics and Automations (ICRA) will be held in London in 2023.

The UK capital was chosen ahead of other shortlisted cities including Vienna and Copenhagen. It is expected to bring in more than £13m in economic benefit to London.

The competitive bid was headed up by Professor Kaspar Althoefer from Queen Mary University of London and supported by MCI UK, ExCeL London and the London Convention Bureau.

Professor Althoefer said it was a “massive boost for UK Robotics, considering that this is the first time ever that a major international robotics conference will come to the country.”

More than 4,000 of the world’s top experts and researchers in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics will come to ExCeL London for a four-day conference between 29 May – 2 June 2023.

“We are continually looking to the future and the trends that will shape our industry,” Andrew Swanston, Head of Sales for Conferences and Events at ExCeL London said.

“We recognise that technology does and will continue to play an increasingly important role in delivering world-class events. ICRA will provide a fascinating insight into the role of AI and Robotics, and we are excited to see what we can learn from the content.”

London is capitalising on its reputation as a leader in hosting some of the world’s biggest tech events and conferences. The recent London Tech Week welcomed more than 55,000 delegates to 300 events across the city.

Other events hosted in the UK capital include financial services and Fintech conference SIBOS in September 2019, as well as corporate events for Adobe, Salesforce, Oracle and the largest Google Cloud event in Europe, Google Cloud NEXT.

Venture capital investment into the UK’s Artificial Intelligence sector has increased almost six-fold from 2014 to 2018, according to Tech Nation 2019.

London is home to 758 AI companies – double the total of Paris and Berlin combined – specialising in industries such as insurance, finance and law.