Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Professor Ronald E Henderson’s “Driverless City Project” investigates the critical link between the urban landscape and navigation safety of mobile co-robots; from self-driving cars to delivery drones, that operate on city streets.
The project addresses questions of safety and trust in operating ubiquitous robots in dense urban environments by determining what changes to the urban infrastructure can increase safety, usability, and sustainability.
Professor Henderson’s research develops scenarios that leverage technology to make changes in the transportation infrastructure that lead to positive changes for society: How can urban public spaces be designed to serve human needs and social equity during increased growth of autonomous vehicles? How can landscape architects employ the latest developments in mapping tools and navigation software in understanding and creating design interventions? What design opportunities exist between balancing autonomous vehicle navigation with meaningful civic spaces? How can we reshape 20th century transportation infrastructure into 21st century human infrastructure?
Ronald Henderson is Professor and Director of the Landscape Architecture and Urbanism Programme at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago USA.
He is founding principal at LIRIO Landscape Architecture based in Newport, USA, whose work in North America, Asia, and Europe has been widely celebrated.
Recent and current projects include the Gardens of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Newport Art Museum Campus, Newport Town Spring, Elizabethan Theatre at Chateau d'Hardelot, and Memorial to the Abolition of the Slave Trade.
Professor Henderson is Senior Fellow of Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, a Japan-US Friendship Commission Creative Artist Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
He is author of The Gardens of Suzhou (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) and contributed to New Horizons: Eight Perspectives on Chinese Landscape Architecture Today (Birkhauser, 2020) which was one of the American Society of Landscape Architect's Best Books of 2020.
