As part of my trip back to the UK I has also arranged a follow-up visit to the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. I visited for the first time about a year ago, and received a slightly bemused reception, although my visit turned out to be very interesting and worthwhile.
This year I offered to give a lunchtime seminar, before going round to spend time with the various project teams in the laboratory. I based my presentation on a summary of my research that I had prepared as a lecture last year for teaching in a Communication Studies unit at UWA. My seminar was very well received, by an interested audience who proceeded to ask lots of good questions. I definitely found that talking to people in the lab this year was even more fruitful than last year, because they had a better idea about where I was coming from and the direction of my own research.
I was encouraged by the response I received, and have since tried (although, thinking about it now, not tried hard enough) to set up some joint research with members of the lab. I should really follow this up again, now that I am feeling more positive about my own research.
