The Turing Institute was founded by Donald Michie, Peter Mowforth, and Tim Niblett in June 1983. The Institute was named after Alan Turing, with whom Donald Michie had collaborated during World War II at Bletchley Park.

The organisation grew from Edinburgh University's Machine Intelligence Research Unit to combine AI research and technology transfer. Sir Graham Hills was influential in the Institute's relocation to Glasgow in 1983, when it built a close working connection with Strathclyde University with the assistance of the Scottish Development Agency. Lord Balfour of Burleigh and Shirley Williams joined the board with a growing staff of researchers and AI specialists. Stephen Muggleton, who was responsible for establishing Inductive Logic Programming, was notable among these individuals.

In 1984, Professor Jim Alty relocated his Human-Machine Interaction (HCI) group (later known as the Scottish HCI Centre) to the Turing Institute. The relocation involved a considerable expansion of the Institute's Postgraduate school. Jim Alty joined the Turing Institute's Board of Directors and was appointed CEO. The HCI Centre and the Institute worked together on numerous projects.

Resource Centre

Following the publication of the UK Government's Alvey Report on AI in 1984, the Institute was designated as an Alvey Journeyman centre for the UK. Companies such as IBM, Burroughs, British Airways, Shell, and Unilever collaborated with Judith Richards to develop new industrial AI applications. The Turing Institute Library was founded in 1983 and grew by selling access to its Information Services via subscription. The library created a comprehensive, searchable electronic collection of content from most of the world's primary AI research and development centres. By dialling into the system, library affiliates got weekly summaries of newly added materials that may be ordered or downloaded as abstracts. Addison-Wesley, the publisher, and the Turing Institute Press series of books have a tight working partnership.

Research and development

Westinghouse Corporation funded the Institute's research when it developed a machine-learned rule-based approach to increasing nuclear power plant efficiency. Tatjana Zrimec utilised technology to study how playful robots may learn their environment. In contrast, Claude Sammut used the technique to study machine learning and control and contributed to the development of Reinforcement Learning. In addition, Ivan Bratko made multiple trips to the Turing Institute to conduct machine learning and Advanced Robotics research.

Applications

The Turing Institute Vision Group produced multi-scale tools and applications throughout the 1980s. Using the Multi-Scale Signal Matching (MSSM) technology, several 3D industrial applications were developed and deployed, including:

• 3D head modelling
• Robot navigation
• Real-time robot camera stereo vergence
• Terrain Modelling
• Scene of Crime footprint capture in 3D for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
• Digital archiving of Maxillofacial reconstructive and Denture casts at the Glasgow Dental School.
• Brain model classification at Guys Hospital
• Strathclyde Police will boost CCTV image quality using hyper-resolution techniques.
• High-speed monitoring of targets for the British Ministry of Defense.