The BRL co-directors are Professors Arthur Richards[7] and Matthew Studley.

The Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS) lab was co-founded by Alan Winfield, Chris Melhuish,[10] Owen Holland and Tony Pipe[11] and led by Winfield until 2001, when Melhuish took over as lab director.

In 2005 £1M was secured from the HEFCE Research Infrastructure Fund[12] in a joint bid from UWE and the University of Bristol and the IAS lab was renamed and relaunched as the Bristol Robotics Lab.

Following relocation to its current premises the BRL was officially launched by David Willetts in May 2012.

The feature was the third of a three part series of pre-budget specials fronted by anchor George Alagiah and then Chief Economics Correspondent Hugh Pym.