Made Smarter Innovation: Industry ready Robotics and Automation

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £6 million in innovation projects. These will be for innovation in late-stage robotics and automation to increase productivity, sustainability and resilience within manufacturing processes.

The aim of this competition is to develop and demonstrate industrially ready robotics and automation solutions deployable within a factory production area.

Your proposal must:

• deliver an innovative digital development or significantly novel application of robotics and automation
• overcome a technical barrier within manufacturing processes in a factory production area

Eligibility

Your project must:

• have total costs between £200,000 and £4 million
• not exceed the maximum grant limit of 50% of your total costs
• start by 1 October 2023
• end by 31 December 2024
• last between 9 months and 15 months
• involve at least one factory
• include both manufacturing and digital technology capabilities in your consortium
• be applicable to at least one manufacturing sector
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

We encourage projects that cover multiple manufacturing sectors.

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size
• collaborate with at least one other UK registered organisation

A business can only lead on two applications within this competition but can be included as a collaborator in a further two applications. If a business is not leading any application it can collaborate in up to four applications within this competition. Research organisations, charities, not for profit, public sector organisations and research and technology organisations (RTO), can collaborate on any number of applications.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to develop and demonstrate industrially ready robotics and automation solutions deployable within a factory production area.

Your project must:

• deliver an innovative digital development or significantly novel application of late stage robotics and automation
• overcome a technical barrier within manufacturing processes in a factory production setting

Your project must focus on demonstrating the robotic and automation innovations to deliver productivity, sustainability and resilience improvements to the manufacturing process.

Your project must:

• be robotics or automation focused within a factory production area
• be focused on value-adding production tasks or directly associated load, unload and move tasks
• include a physical deployment within a manufacturing facility or very near equivalent, for example, a comparable development facility
• demonstrate a clear, scalable commercial exploitation route within the project consortium

We encourage you to:

• demonstrate clear, scalable commercial exploitation route to other manufacturers and manufacturing sectors beyond the initial project consortium itself
• include a demonstrator element with access beyond the project timescales (host visits, on-line access, video footage)

Specific themes

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

• flexible and modular automation: driving repurposing and flexible redeployment to maximise use life
• systems integration: productising scalable commercial solutions
• mobile robotics: including modular robots and multi purpose
• human assisted and cobots: including ethics and human machine interface (HMI)
• no-code and low-code solutions: to improve SME accessibility and lower access cost
• flexible packaged solutions: reconfigurable modular solutions, tight access retrofit, hygiene friendly
• gripper and end-effector optimization: especially for challenging production environments, fragile, shape
• self powered or cableless systems: to reduce installation and safety challenges, maximise flexibility
• improving robotic accuracy and dexterity: developing low cost metrology to self adjust
• AI in robotic control: developments in machine learning to improve performance

Projects are also encouraged to consider, as an element of their project:

• safety of HMI, including integration with smart cells
• robot ethics, roboethics
• equality, diversity and inclusion opportunities
• relevant standards compliance

This list is not intended to be exhaustive or limiting.

Briefing and support

An online briefing was held on 18th January: click here to access the recording (this will be uploaded within a few days of the event).

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner, contact Innovate UK KTN’s Robotics and AI team or our Manufacturing team.