Huw Robson

Biography

Huw Robson is director of the Pervasive Computing Lab at HP Labs, investigating technologies for mobile and situated devices and high-value services that can deliver the “right thing in the moment” to users.

He joined HP in 1994 with the assignment of creating a new digital media department. That department has since expanded to include other teams from Bristol and Palo Alto to form the Pervasive Computing Lab. The current research portfolio includes innovation in and around novel viewing devices; Memory Spot, a tiny, high-capacity re-writable data chip; mscapes, which creates a digital media overlay on top of a physical landscape; active posters, which uses 2-D barcodes to deliver digital content to mobile phones with in-built cameras; and personal collaboration technology.

Before joining HP, Robson worked in the audio-visual and digital multimedia industry, including the advanced project and systems group of Philips Consumer Electronics, in the Netherlands. In 1991, he moved back to the U.K. from the Netherlands to join Videologic, for which he managed the development of platform-independent videographic middleware for the PC, including the world’s first motion-JPEG digital video capture-and-playback solution.

Robson also manages a number of philanthropy programs for HP, including co-management of the pan-European Art & Science initiative. He is a trustee of the Windscreen Trust and a member of the advisory boards of the Royal Photographic Society and the optics department of Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London.

He has an honors degree in electrical and electronic engineering from University College Cardiff.

Professional activities

• Visiting Fellow, University of the West of England, Centre for Fine Print Research
• Wildscreen Trust, trustee
• Royal Photographic Society, advisory board
• Optics Department Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine (London), advisory board