The planet’s first operated-remotely offshore search and rescue service is one of thirty-eight automation and robotics projects obtaining 7 million GBP from State investments. UK offshore wind workers could soon be safeguarded leveraging a remotely operated search-and-rescue service. This is all thanks to a forerunning project receiving 6 billion GBP of State Support. This project is merely one of 38-business-led projects which will obtain funding to hasten their AI and robotics frameworks as an aspect of their initiative to bounce back better from the coronavirus (COVID-19) world-wide pandemic. 

Amanda Solloway, Science Minister made the announcement that the winning projects which included a paint applicator robot and a healthcare drone pad control centre, today (Tuesday 25 May) at the 2021 Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Industry Showcase. 

Situated all over the United Kingdom, the projects will assist to revolutionize critical UK industries and domains – ranging from offshore energies to life sciences, by enhancing their safety levels, and thereby making them more productive and efficient. The funding makes up portion of the state’s ongoing commitment to make investments in revolutionary research and enhance economy-wide investments in research and development to 2.4 b y six years from now. 

Science Minister Amanda Solloway stated: 

We’re putting our weight behind very transformative technologies as innovation is at the very foundation of our plans to develop back better, and bounce back from the pandemic, facilitate productivity and expand the economy. 

From a unique, first-in-its-line automated rescue services for UK offshore energy staff, to drone technologies backing up our NHS, such robotic technologies could be life altering as part of our ongoing efforts to handle planetary challenges, from being ready for the likes of a pandemic, to climate change, all the while setting up the UK’s supremacy in terms of being viewed as science superpower.  

Offshore Survival Systems in Edinburgh is being funded to produce a first-in-its-line search and rescue service which will leverage a network of semi-autonomous unmanned rescue vehicles (URVs) to stop fatalities in the ocean. It will be intended mainly at supporting UK staff working in the offshore energy industry who must handle escalated wind speeds, and wave heights, while operating far away from the shore.  

Digital & Future Technologies, an electronic enterprise in Colchester, Essex, will also obtain funding to assist NHS and healthcare employees to handle COVID-19 and upcoming pandemics in the same vein. The business will be developing an automated drone framework which will go about loading and unloading its own cargo, making sure that critical healthcare gear like personal protective equipment (PPE) can be given to UK-based hospitals in a swift fashion and with no requirement for human assistance. 

University of Liverpool spin-out Mobotix will leverage the funds it has obtained to produce an automated “back-up lab” which can undergo operation remotely. This lab will imply that breakthrough research can be executed during stages of lockdown or social distancing, without risk for any sort of infection. The project will assist develop operational resilience for the UK’s dominant life sciences labs so that they can keep up with the scientific innovation and excellence they illustrated in fighting COVID-19 over the course of the previous year. 

Challenge Director for the Robots for a Safer World challenge, Andrew Tyrer, stated: 

The funding is critical to broadening the scope of what we do and reach out to innovative designers not taken up by our previous competitions. With nil ambitions underlying industrial planning in every domain, and the opportunity to redevelop new industries following the pandemic. AI, robotics, and automation are the critical factors to keep an eye on for the future. 

Other projects which are obtaining grand funding consist of: 

• Motion Robotics from Southampton, producing a smart drone pad control centre to handle upcoming increases in levels of drone transport for medical services. The control centre will assist in coordinating drone flights in between hospitals, medical centres, and labs or suppliers, making the shore the supply chain is smoothened and suffers from no interruptions 
• Crover Ltd. a technology firm based out of Edinburgh producing the planet’s first miniscule robotic device that can go swimming through grains stored in bulk, for instance, wheat and barley, illustrating their condition and identifying the spoiling of grains. This will facilitate farmers to interfere at a preliminary phase, minimize wastage, and safeguard their revenues.  
• HausBots Limited, a small and medium sized enterprise (SME) based out of Birmingham, England, producing a robot that can scale walls that paints and safeguards walls from the wet. Painting is viewed as the fifth most dangerous job in the United Kingdom, with painters apt to be at the receiving end of accidents and injuries, such as repetitive strain injury. This project intends to provide safety and productivity to painters, contractors, and customers, all in an affordable way, 

The investment is being provided via the UK Research and Innovation’s flagship Robots for a safer world challenge, a 112 million-pound initiative to generate research and innovative ideas in sophisticated robotics and autonomous systems.