Sector spotlight: Robotics

Fact…

• Bristol Robotics Lab is Europe’s leading robotics hub, home to over 150 academics, researchers and industry practitioners

• Current estimates suggest the market for robots in non-military sectors will be around £70bn a year by 2025.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

In the coming decades, robots are likely to transform life as we know it: “it looks as thought it may not be ridiculous to use the word revolution”, says Professor Tony Pipe at Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL). One glance at Amazon’s delivery drone prototype slated to be taking to our skies in 2017 suggests that the advent of cheap, efficient technology has brought us to the cusp of great change.

Bristol stands at the centre of Europe’s flourishing robotics scene, hosting November’s European Robotics Week as a result. That status can in large part be attributed to the forward thinking establishment of the BRL, a sector lynchpin. Ideas like the bionic arm, robot spider and gaming robots are examples of the advances born here. The industry is embryonic but our competitive advantage is being exploited with substantial investment.

A partnership between UWE and Bristol University, the Lab is “the most comprehensive academic centre for multi-disciplinary robotics research in the UK”, active in all the hottest robotics areas. It was the first in the country to become a doctoral training centre in the subject and leads thinking on service robotics, intelligent autonomous systems and bioengineering. When an attached £22m Enterprise Zone opens in August 2016 it will be able to offer incubation and grow-on facilities to new innovations, helping to commercialise good ideas. Together with the Echord++ programme, intended to help businesses deploy robotic technologies, it will be a full service facility.

“It’s been so successful because we address the whole innovation pipeline, right to market,” says David Lennard, BRL Business Development Manager. “We’re able to harness the collective capabilities of the two universities.”

Care of elderly and infirm patients is one area cited for dramatic transformation; collaborative manufacturing between man and machine another. As the idea of robot workers can sit uncomfortably, extensive research is being conducted in collaboration with sociologists and psychologists to tackle the social challenge of such change

The potential for growth is enormous. Recent research by Barclays Bank found that even “a moderate £1.2bn investment in automation has the potential to increase the overall value added to the UK economy by as much as £60.5bn over the next decade” and “could actually help to safeguard UK manufacturing jobs”.

Whether we should automate or not and the general ethics of robotics and artificial intelligence are subjects just as hotly debated (the pros and cons of automation, for example, and a recent piece in the Independent about true risk of robots) as developed – “if it’s powerful enough to be useful it’s powerful enough to be dangerous”, says Tony.

WORKING ROBOTS

The majority of robotics innovations are intended as labour saving, devices to make tasks easier or safer. The applications for the rapidly evolving technology are as broad as your imagination and a number are already in use.

When investment was made into Southmead’s mega-hospital, it included funds for porter robots and a pharmacy robot.

A fleet of 12 Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) carry out heavier tasks, such as moving supplies, food, medication and rubbish weighing up to 500kg. Working behind the scenes, the robots use infrared sensors and an inbuilt map to navigate their way around set routes, even able to open doors and use ten of the lifts.

Director of facilities at North Bristol NHS Trust, Simon Wood, said: “The AGVs can work around the clock unattended to carry out scheduled tasks. We wanted to incorporate appropriate technologies into the new Brunel building and these are well-used and tested all over Europe so were an ideal solution.”

In the pharmacy, a £250k cutting edge robot stores, picks and moves 80% of medications. A robotic head scans barcodes and moves up, down and along 12m corridors to pick the medications required and move them to the dispenser. Each night the machinery completes its own stock check, ordering any low stock items and arranging ‘high moving’ items closer to the shelf. “It allows you to store all packs of medicines in a dense storage environment,” says Andrew Davies, Director of Pharmacy. “Density is the biggest advantage – traditional storage would take up 50% more space – and bar codes add security, reducing the potential for errors.”

Applying robotics to prostheses, Open Bionics introduced some 3D-printed products to the market this year, with the Iron Man and Elsa designs for kids gaining much attention in the press. Based in Fishponds, Open Bionics’ aim to make prosthetic hands attractive, useful and – crucially – affordable has won the company a place in the top 50 robotics list published by Robotics Business Review, as well as founder Joel Gibbard the Young Design Engineer of the Year at the British Engineering Excellence Awards, among other prizes.

In manufacturing, companies like OC Robotics in Filton design and manufacture snake-arm robots with a reach of more than 3m and cumulative bend of over 180 degrees, for work in confined and hazardous environments. Driven by wire ropes, and controlled by OC Robotics’ proprietary software, only the arm is deployed in the working area itself, meaning snake-arm robots can inspect, fasten and clean.

The company is currently leading the LaserSnake2 project, a collaborative R&D programme combining robots and lasers to create safe, remote-controlled, cost-effective tools for high-hazard confined spaces such as decommissioned nuclear facilities. They say: “The approach has the potential to increase safety and reduce decommissioning timescales and costs. 

FUN ROBOTS

The Arcadia spectacular that packed Queen Square this summer was a visual demonstration of how fascinating robotics are to the general public. The company behind the nuts and bolts, Rusty Squid, build large-scale robots in a workshop on Spike Island.

“We fit somewhere in the middle of the academic R&D world and creative world,” says artistic director David McGoran, who has a background in puppetry and animatronics. He says puppeteers have an important role to play in building trustworthy movements for robots that will enable people to properly interact with them and has been working with the Bristol Robotics Lab on the technology of telepresence – animating humanoid robots from afar, one of which took the stage in this year’s TEDx talks. Potential applications could include remote working, teleconference style meetings and Avatar-like physical presences for the disabled.

While that project continues, he’s been working on a large, to-be-announced project with At Bristol to coincide with next year’s Festival of Robotics. “The demand for creative robotics is there,” says David, “so I’m surprised there aren’t more companies.”

On a smaller scale but no less ambitious scale, Reach Robotics has been working to develop gaming robots ‘combining robotics with gaming and augmented reality’. “This bridges the gap between the physical and real world,” says CEO and founder Silas Adekunle.

After graduating from a robotics accelerator in the States – “good not just for the weather but for the contacts” – Silas and team are busily prototyping back in Bristol and working towards a Christmas 2016 sales launch.

“The robotics sector is growing here. BRL is recognised as the best in Europe,” he says, adding that many of the projects the Lab has nurtured are now coming to the point of commercialisation.

“Every time a project goes from lab to commercialisation, jobs are created.”

EDUCATIONAL ROBOTS

At-Bristol science centre is one of several educational services teaching children about the possibilities of robotics. There has been a huge, nationwide push in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and maths) to enable the next generation to capitalise on industries like robotics.

Aimed at children in years 3 to 6, “the LEGO® Robotics workshop introduces computing and programming and gives children an opportunity to explore robotics by programming a robot and its sensors to complete a series of challenges including movement, avoiding obstacles and arriving at a specified destination,” says Education Officer Becky Davies.

“The workshop offers students the opportunity to increase their computer literacy, try out programming, and develop their skills in problem solving and thinking logically. It also gives them the chance to think about what computers and robots are.

“Students absolutely love the robots. One of my favourites is when the students programme their robot to do a celebratory dance when it completes their final challenge! Children growing up now will live in a much more technologically oriented society, and it’s important they develop the foundation skills, knowledge and confidence to feel included in this emerging society.”

Robots vs Animals is an initiative by BRL, teaching children how the animal kingdom and natural world inspire robotic innovations. Collaborations with UWE and Bristol Zoo as well as national competitions for children have brought the concept of robotics to hundreds of young minds.