Abb Limited

This collaborative R&D project, led by Brompton bikes, concentrates on the development and demonstration of industrially ready robotic and automation solutions to optimise bicycle production at pilot scale before they can be confidently deployed at Brompton's future factory. The project will establish a 'Robot sandpit/playground' at Brompton's site in Gre...

In this project the Dover-Calais/Dunkirk Green Corridor consortium focuses on the development and feasibility of implementing a green corridor (GC) between the Port of Dover (PoD) and the Ports of Calais and Dunkirk. The project takes the Dover--Calais/Dunkirk route, as its feasibility case and will investigate viable energy pathways for the corridor prov...

"The UK soft fruit market is now worth at retail well over £1.3 billion per annum. The UK grows over 160,000 tonnes of fruit and employs 29,000 seasonal and typically migrant pickers. 50% of the total production cost is for labour. The soft fruit industry is extremely concerned with the both the availability of picking labour and labour cost inflation. Th...

"Traditional construction is a low-tech but flexible manufacturing process. It is carried out 'on-site' using pre-manufactured components (windows, doors, bricks, blocks etc) and the manufacture of basic elements such as concrete, plaster etc. Whilst its flexibility has much to commend it (given the bespoke nature of buildings and their geographic distrib...

This project aims to develop a new robotic picking system to harvest fresh mushrooms reducing labour demands by ca. 66%. The work will be carried out by a consortium comprising: Littleport Mushroom Farms, a major UK mushroom supplier; ABB, a major UK-based robotic supplier; Stelram, a small specialist UK developer of robotic solutions; and the University ...

The project will innovate in adaptable, reconfigurable robotic and supporting digital manufacturing technology to deliver a step change in productivity in processes that manufacture & assemble a range of products in small production lots. It will focus on construction product manufacture but outcomes will also be applicable to other manufacturing sectors....

Construction accounts for 9% of UK GDP, employing 3M people. Whilst the size of the construction industry suggests that there should be many opportunities for the use of robotics, uptake has been slow. Projects are often bespoke, with complex supply chains. Demand also fluctuates, leading to a risk-averse approach to investment. Previous work has shown th...

Concrete is widely used in construction due to its ability to provide structural capacity andfunction cost effectively and at scale. However, its role in construction does not lend itself tocreativity in design. High-end clients typically demand state-of-the-art designs, presenting achallenge in a sector where every building is essentially different to th...

Traditional construction is a low-tech manufacturing process. It is carried out largely 'on-site' with the assembly of some pre-manufactured components (bricks, windows etc) and, whilst flexible and adaptable to a client's needs, is inefficient and challenging to automate. The industry is consequently making greater use of off-site factory manufacture. Th...

Laser processing is extensively used in advanced manufacturing, mostly using conventional (CNC-based) machine tools. Many critical laser processes, such as drilling of aerospace components, are required to achieve positional accuracy less than 25µm, which is not possible using existing robot configurations. FlexLase project aims to develop a flexible robo...