To lead a collaborative project your organisation must be:

• a UK registered business of any size
• a research and technology organisation (RTO)
• a public sector organisation
• or academic institution

If the lead organisation is an Academic institution or RTO it must collaborate with at least one business of any size.

To work alone your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, or public sector organisation.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

A business, academic institution, research and technology organisation (RTO) or public sector organisation can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.

If a business, academic institution, research and technology organisation (RTO), public sector organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

Your project must:

• have a grant funding request of between £1 million and £2 million
• last 43 months
• start by 1 September 2026
• end by 31 March 2030

Any funded organisation needs to carry out their project work in the UK and must intend to exploit the project results from or in the UK.

If applying collaboratively, your consortium must ensure that no one partner accounts for more than 70% of the total eligible costs.

The aim of this Robotics Adoption Central Convening Body competition is to close the knowledge gap that slows down the adoption of robotics. By accelerating adoption, the convening body should help improve productivity, safety, competitiveness and sustainability. It should also support better health outcomes, stronger infrastructure and contribute to economic growth.

Central convener will at a minimum:

• share knowledge across the network of physical hubs through collecting and sharing success stories and lessons learned
• create a website for the programme as a landing page or front door for the hubs and forward enquiries to the physical hubs
• publicise the robotics adoption programme to end users
• act as a secretariat to convene regular meetings of the Robotics Adoption Hub project leads
• coordinate the robotics adoption hubs in creating materials and guides with standardised branding
• aim to be self sustaining beyond the programme
• support all physical adoption hubs equally across the range of regions and sectors
• incorporate learnings from international activity, including technology trends, market developments and adoption barriers
• be a source of information and guidance on robotics developing and sharing knowledge of the UK ecosystem of suppliers, integrators and courses

For this competition, robotics is defined broadly. It includes drones operating on land, sea and air; autonomous plant and service robots; and industrial robots or automated machinery that use sensors, actuators and control software. Robotics does not include systems that are only software based.

Your project must :

• create a website for the programme to act as a front door for the hubs
• act as a secretariat to convene the project leads of the hubs to share knowledge on success stories and lessons learned
• work with the adoption hubs to utilise existing and develop new processes, procedures and materials to accelerate robotics adoption with standardised branding across the network
• embed a mechanism to become self sustaining beyond the end programme to continue and build on the adoption network
• incorporate learnings from other countries

Innovate UK will hold an online briefing at 10.30am on Monday 2 March: click here to register for a place. This briefing will cover both strands of the competition. A recording and slides will be available afterwards.

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Robotics team.