Story ID: 564
UK Showcases Robotics Challenge
By: James Wynbrandt
Caption: UK grant program aims to speed development of robots and drones for duty in extreme and hazardous environments.
Word Count: 326
With robotics and AI expanding their presence in aerospace—and within the Farnborough International Airshow exhibition halls—the British government is highlighting at the UK Research and Innovation airshow display (Innovation Zone 3796) its Robotics for a Safer World Challenge. The Challenge is a £93 million ($123 million) grant program aimed at speeding development of safer and more productive technologies for working in extreme environments.

Potential applications include robots and drones that work in high radiation areas, undersea, in confined spaces, and outer space. While much of the technology is available today, the two major impediments to progress are “regulations and public perception,” said Andrew Tyrer, interim director of the Robotics Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. 

The Challenge is currently funding five different use cases for drones in five UK cities. At the Farnborough Airshow display, VTOL Technologies is exhibiting the flying wing built for one of the challenges, designed to deliver medical supplies between hospitals in London—a job currently done by motorbike.

At FIA, Challenge leaders are eager to interface with “technology providers and people who don’t necessarily identify themselves as being in the [drone and robotics] marketplace,” said Tyrer. “They have the technology, but realize they can transfer it” to these future applications.

Rolls Mx Bots

Meanwhile UK engine maker Rolls-Royce is demonstrating how robotics could "revolutionize" the future of engine maintenance. In what it describes as an element of its new "IntelligentEngine" concept, the company is working with the University of Nottingham and Harvard University to see how "snake"-like robots could go into engines "like an endoscope." This could range up to having a "swarm" of miniature robots that could enter the engine to do inspections and even repairs (in some cases controlled by engineers in what R-R terms "boreblending." This could, for example, remove the need to take an engine off-wing, or at least make decision-making on maintenance actions more reliable.