ARIA funds and supports research teams, known as Creators, to achieve breakthroughs. They could be anyone, from individuals doing their own research and PhD students at a university, to startups and large organisations.

Our programmes deliberately reach across disciplines, sectors and institutions – we welcome applications from across the R&D ecosystem, including individuals, universities, research institutions, small, medium and large companies, charities and public sector research organisations.

We do not restrict applicants by location, but UK benefit is one of the six criteria against which every proposal is evaluated.

Applications are eligible from any type of organisation and from any location. TA1 has a strong commercial focus, so we expect most competitive applicants will be companies or intend to form one if funded, and to make a UK benefit case commensurate with the scale of the award. We do not normally expect the same team to apply to both TAs, but different teams within one organisation may.

Applicants seeking additional technical, commercial, or end-user expertise can use our teaming request form to find potential collaborators who have registered interest in this programme. We’re also holding an optional teaming workshop in London on 2 November 2026 (contact ARIA for details of this workshop).

ARIA wants to revolutionise how robots move and the environments they operate in. Much of the work we need robots to do is in places they can’t yet get to, at least not while carrying useful equipment, coping with changing conditions, and operating for long enough to make the trip worthwhile. Robots can now do remarkable things in controlled settings, but none is yet trusted to carry essential supplies across a flooded, debris-strewn street. Most current robots rely on body designs and components that assume limited contact with the environment. Few are built to absorb repeated impacts or hold on without burning energy, and fewer still keep working in the field for long enough to be worth deploying.

We believe these limitations reflect fundamental inadequacies of the physical body, and as such can’t be overcome with compute or AI alone. The Robot Locomotion programme is a four-year effort to change that. We are not seeking incremental refinement of existing designs. We are seeking radically new approaches to robot hardware that can unlock order-of-magnitude improvements in metrics such as efficiency, robustness and power density. Equally ambitious proposals could enable valuable capabilities beyond the reach of existing approaches, or combine improvements that make a previously impractical task viable. These gains must hold under realistic operating conditions, without unacceptable sacrifices in other essential capabilities. Our ambition is to change what robots can practically and economically do.

The programme is open to any mode of locomotion: walking, running, jumping, crawling, burrowing, flying, swimming, climbing, rolling and more, as well as hybrid modes that combine any of these. We are looking for advances that enable valuable work in environments where existing robots, vehicles or manual methods are inadequate, unsafe, unreliable or uneconomic.

This solicitation offers two routes: TA1 Integrated Robot Bodies and TA2 Foundational Technologies. Across both routes, the fundamental advance must lie in physical technology or body architecture.

TA1 will make larger awards to a small number of teams to build integrated robot bodies for valuable use cases. Teams will work towards a Target Robot Profile (TRP): a quantitative specification of the capabilities, operating conditions and practical and economic requirements a robot must meet to deliver a compelling advantage over the strongest credible alternative in a defined use case. At the end of their four-year project, they will demonstrate a field-testable prototype in an independently assessed real-world challenge, with strong supporting evidence that its enabling physical capabilities will deliver an overwhelming, commercially relevant advantage at deployment.

TA1 seeks a step change in physical locomotion capability that enables valuable tasks in places or conditions that current robots cannot reliably access. Teams should identify a primary use case and prospective first customers, with evidence of substantive engagement with the relevant sector, end-users and economic buyers. Explain both the proposed physical advance and why customers would adopt the resulting system. TA1 proposals should normally target at least a tenfold improvement over the projected state of the art at the likely deployment date in a headline figure of merit, such as cost per useful task or area inspected per deployment, along with aggressive cost and reliability targets. TA1 teams should demonstrate both technical and commercial expertise along with deep experience of the proposed use-case and its challenges.

TA1 projects run for four years across three phases, with down-selection at the end of Years 1 and 2, at which points only teams that meet the quality threshold will be eligible to continue, and meeting it does not guarantee continuation: at each gate we will select as many qualifying teams as the available budget allows. For Year 1, there will likely be 6–8 teams with a budget of £1m-2m per team for the year; by years 3-4, this is likely to decrease to 1-3 teams with budgets of £8m-12m each for the two-year period. Total funding will be up to £15m per team over 4 years.

The programme endpoint is an integrated, field-testable prototype. Given the novelty sought, we do not expect a deployable product within the available timeline and budget. Our ambition is a prototype with sufficiently compelling performance to change the conversation around robot capabilities, and attract major follow-on investment for further development and commercialisation.

For full details of what is expected of applicants, please read the call for proposals.

TA2 will make smaller awards to develop and test foundational physical technologies or body architectures with the potential to transform locomotion. Projects must resolve a critical scientific or engineering uncertainty, but need not deliver an integrated robot during the award.

TA2 projects may address single components or explore new body designs. We are looking for projects that could enable a new capability, cross a decisive practical threshold, or otherwise make a compelling contribution to future locomotion systems. The full performance ambition does not need to be realised over the 30-month project lifetime, but the project must produce decisive evidence about whether and how it can be achieved.

TA2 projects should aim for a step change in physical technology, normally (a) targeting at least a tenfold (10x) improvement in a relevant measure, such as durability or power density, over the projected state of the art at the relevant comparison date, or (b) enabling capabilities current robots do not have at all. Applicants should identify and justify the comparison date, explain why their targets are ambitious in light of emerging technologies and how the improvement could translate into a substantial locomotion advantage after accounting for relevant trade-offs.

Funding will normally be £1m–2m per project, max £4m, for up to 30 months. ARIA expect to make 5-10 awards in TA2.

For full details of what is expected of applicants, please read the call for proposals.

In scope across both TA1 and TA2

• Novel physical technologies and body architectures, including bio-inspired approaches, that offer a compelling locomotion advantage. Novelty may lie in a critical component, the architecture or their integration: applicants need not reinvent every component. A familiar body design with a transformative physical advance, or a novel architecture using established components, may qualify if a sufficiently high improvement in performance can be demonstrated.
• Co-design of the body with its actuation, energy storage, compliance, sensing and control.
• Technology targeting any locomotion modality, including hybrid and multi-medium locomotion (e.g. walking/climbing, air/water); any scale of robot; and any morphology.
• Multi-robot or swarm systems where these enable a transformational advance in locomotion.
• Experiments, modelling and simulation needed to develop or validate the physical technology.
• Control or other software specific to the proposed physical technology and necessary to develop, exploit or demonstrate its capabilities.
• Adoption and adaptation of existing AI and autonomy tools—including perception, navigation, planning, cognition, foundation models or world models—where needed to operate or test the proposed hardware.
• Projects where the lead entity collaborates with or subcontracts other teams.

In scope specifically for TA1 Integrated Robot Bodies

• Development, integration and testing of a robot body against its Target Robot Profile and the demonstration requirements in Section 3.1.
• Component development in-house or through collaborators or subcontractors, including defined work packages and collaborative R&D. Teams may explore competing approaches and, as evidence develops, drop, add or replace partners, subject to ARIA approval of material changes. The TA1 lead remains responsible for integration; every component it continues to fund must have a credible route into the physical demonstration at the end of the programme.
• Theoretical or computational work packages needed to develop, control or validate the robot body, including advanced modelling or simulation techniques delivered by collaborators or subcontractors.
• Purchase or licensing of components, materials and software needed to create, operate or demonstrate the robot body. General-purpose products are eligible; they need not themselves be novel.
• Field-site engagement, representative testing and preparation for the independently assessed end-of-programme challenge.
• Customer discovery, design for manufacture, commercial planning and work on regulation, certification or insurance, as relevant to the project’s maturity.
• Applications may include, but are not limited, to civil, commercial, public-sector and security uses, subject to ARIA’s assessment of relevant responsible-innovation, national-security and misuse considerations.

In scope specifically for TA2 Foundational Technologies

• Basic science and technology development at any maturity addressing a critical uncertainty in a physical principle, material, mechanism, component or body architecture. A TA1 partner, defined customer use case or robot-level integration during the award is not required.
• Exploratory morphologies and whole-body concepts not yet ready for application-led development.
• Purchase or licensing of components, materials and software needed to develop or test the technology.