Peter Mowforth (born 27 October 1953) is a British businessman,

ecommerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile comm ...

specialist and Chief Executive of INDEZ Ltd, an ecommerce agency based in

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

. Formerly a

Machine Learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

Robotics Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

and

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

research scientist who co-founded the

Turing Institute The Turing Institute was an artificial intelligence laboratory in Glasgow, Scotland, between 1983 and 1994. The company undertook basic and applied research, working directly with large companies across Europe, the United States and Japan devel ...

. He set up and ran the First Robot Olympics.

Early life and education

Peter Mowforth was born in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...

, England on 27 October 1953 and went to

Henley Grammar School Henley may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Henley, Dorset, a location * Henley, Gloucestershire, a location *Henley-on-Thames, a town in South Oxfordshire, England **Henley (UK Parliament constituency) ** Henley Rural District, a former rural ...

. He studied

neurophysiology Neurophysiology is a branch of physiology and neuroscience concerned with the functions of the nervous system and their mechanisms. The term ''neurophysiology'' originates from the Greek word ''νεῦρον'' ("nerve") and ''physiology'' (whic ...

and physics in London. With

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

funding he moved to the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

to research early visual perception mechanisms with

Horace Barlow Horace Basil Barlow FRS (8 December 1921 – 5 July 2020) was a British vision scientist. Early life Barlow was the son of the civil servant Sir Alan Barlow and his wife Lady Nora (granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin). Barlow was ...

. Mowforth earned a PhD from the

University of Sheffield The University of Sheffield (informally Sheffield University or TUOS) is a public university, public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Its history traces back to the foundation of Sheffield Medical School in 1828, Fir ...

on the theory and

psychophysics Psychophysics is the field of psychology which quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimulus (physiology), stimuli and the sensation (psychology), sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described ...

stereo vision Binocular vision is seeing with two eyes, which increases the size of the visual field. If the visual fields of the two eyes overlap, binocular depth can be seen. This allows objects to be recognized more quickly, camouflage to be detected, spat ...

Career

He joined the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

's Department o
Machine Intelligence & Perception
in 1982 to study the application of machine learning to robot vision. Following new funding from the US in response to Japan's Fifth Generation project, Mowforth along with Professor

Donald Michie Donald Michie (; 11 November 1923 – 7 July 2007) was a British researcher in artificial intelligence. During World War II, Michie worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, contributing to the effort to solve " Tunny ...

and Tim Niblett, Mowforth jointly founded the

named in memory of

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...

who had worked alongside Michie at

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and Bletchley Park estate, estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire), that became the principal centre of Allies of World War II, Allied World War II cryptography, code-breaking during the S ...

. The Institute then moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow. It formed a partnership with the University of Strathclyde where Mowforth held an honorary lectureship. In 1990, Mowforth founded the First Robot Olympics. The event ran from 27 to 28 September, involved teams from 12 different countries in a variety of competitions, had over 2,500 visitors and is features in th
Guinness Book of Records
He was Director of th
British Machine Vision Association
(1991-1993) where he organised and ran the British Machine Vision Conference in 1991. After the dissolution of the

, Mowforth co-founded INDEZ, in 1995. Mowforth provides advice to the Scottish Government on matters concerned with ecommerce and trade.

Research

Mowforth's PhD research conceived a Multi-Scale Signal Matching (MSSM) approach to match stereo pairs of images using a Gaussian Pyramid. This approach was then tested using psychophysics to measure the human vergence eye response.Mowforth, Peter (1982) "Vergence Eye Movement Control", PhD Thesis, University of Sheffield, UK The MSSM software platform for matching images evolved over the next decade where it was used for a variety of commercial applications including 3D stereo reconstruction, GIS, surgical planning for Maxillo-Facial reconstruction, dental archiving, Data Fusion, MRI image labelling and navigation for mobile robotics. In 1983, Mowforth was part of the machine learning team that worked on the

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

auto-lander project. The system used a structured version of the

ID3 ID3 is a metadata container most often used in conjunction with the MP3 audio file format. It allows information such as the title, artist, album, track number, and other information about the file to be stored in the file itself. ID3 is a '' ...

Machine Learning system using training examples created using a numerical model of the shuttle. At the

Mowforth was involved with a series of advanced

robotics Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

projects including robot navigation, robot sensing and using robots to learn the naïve physics of handling objects through random play.

Media appearances

In 1990 Mowforth was interviewed by

Lorraine Kelly Lorraine Kelly (born 30 November 1959) is a Scottish television presenter. She has presented various television shows for ITV and STV, including '' Good Morning Britain'' (1988–1992), ''GMTV'' (1993–2010), ''This Morning'' (2003–2005, ...

TV-am TV-am was a TV company that broadcast the ITV franchise for breakfast television in the United Kingdom from 1 February 1983 until 31 December 1992. The station was the UK's first national operator of a commercial breakfast television franchise ...

about the First Robot Olympics and the future of

. After the death of his parents he shared their letters sent during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

with a local historical association, which led to significant media interest and television appearances, including on ''

The One Show ''The One Show'' is a British television magazine and chat show programme. Broadcast live on BBC One weekdays at 7:00 pm, it features topical stories and studio guests. It is currently co-hosted by Alex Jones, Roman Kemp, Ronan Keating ...

''. The letters were adapted into an 8-part podcast series. He has written about the importance of ecommerce for trade.

Personal life

Mowforth lives at Heatherbank House,

Milngavie Milngavie ( ; ) is a town in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland and a suburb of Glasgow. It is on the Allander Water, at the northwestern edge of Greater Glasgow, and about from Glasgow city centre. It neighbours Bearsden. Milngavie is a commuter t ...

, Glasgow.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mowforth, Peter 1953 births Academics of the University of Edinburgh Alumni of the University of Cambridge Alumni of the University of Sheffield British artificial intelligence researchers Scottish businesspeople 20th-century Scottish businesspeople 21st-century Scottish businesspeople Scottish chief executives Living people People from Milngavie Businesspeople from Glasgow People from Sheffield