Andrew Blake is a pioneer in the theory and algorithms that allow computers to behave as seeing machines. In particular he has worked on segmentation as optimization, visual tracking as probabilistic inference, and on real-time, 3D vision.  He is perhaps best known for the development of the Condensation algorithm — a method to allow computers to track and interpret complex visual motion.

As Laboratory Director of Microsoft Research Cambridge, Blake was part of the team behind the company's Kinect controller — a revolutionary gaming system capable of sensing the detailed body movements and gestures of its users. In 2018 he established Samsung's AI laboratory in Cambridge UK, and since 2017 has established or advises various AI startup companies, in video-conferencing, self-driving and agritech.

Blake is the recipient of the Silver Medal and the MacRobert Gold Medal of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He won the Mountbatten Medal in 2007 from the Institution of Engineering and Technology and in 2014, exactly 80 years after Einstein's lecture, gave the Gibbs lecture at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, on AI Vision. He was elected to the Council of the Royal Society in 2010 and chaired the Royal Society report of 2019 on the Dynamics of Data Science Skills.