Robotics and AI: Transforming Manufacturing Innovation Lab

This Innovation Lab is an opportunity for businesses to overcome challenges by collaborating with academic experts in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). It offers direct access to funding and a system of support for extended industry–academia collaborations, both of which can enhance your business’s capabilities. This Lab is aimed at businesses working with robotics and/or AI in manufacturing. It will take place in spring 2024 (date to be confirmed).

What is an Innovation Lab? An Innovation Lab is a workshop that facilitates collaborations between businesses and academics. A Lab hosts 3–5 industry partners, who each work in a team with a cross-disciplinary group of academics tailored to their business needs. Each team – guided by the creative consultancy FutureEverything – responds to a challenge posed by their business, working towards a project plan that will be pitched to our expert panel to win the seed funding to put that plan into action.

Robots and AI interacting with people
This event will focus on an area in which human–machine interaction has profound impact: manufacturing. In industrial environments, modern human–machine interaction makes systems safer, easier to use, more efficient, and more effective. In fact, human cooperative operation is now a requirement for manufacturing and robotic systems (e.g., robotics for glovebox/incubator systems in the biomedical industry), specifically to allow for fast and flexible deployment of bespoke automated manufacturing units. The North of England has a high concentration of industrial expertise in the design, development and manufacture of complex machinery, with a potential for growth of £2 billion in export. Atom Valley, designated a Mayoral Development Zone, aims to establish an advanced manufacturing hub that creates 20,000 additional job opportunities in Greater Manchester.

What do you need to do to participate?
· Share the challenge(s) you want to overcome with the support of academic experts in robotics and AI. Bear in mind that projects with scope to develop into larger research collaborations further down the line could attract more funding in the future!
 Commit 2–3 representatives to attend the half-day workshop. Ideally, your representatives will work in your challenge area: if, for example, your challenge is technical in nature, try to send technical staff.
· Consider matching (some of) the funding to conduct your project. This could be in cash or kind (staff time, use of equipment or labs, etc). Either will enhance the scope of your project.

Interested?
Let us know. Contact: wingyui.lam@manchester.ac.uk. (Enquiries can be made to Alex Lam via the same email address.) We will assess your challenge against our academic expertise. If your challenge is shortlisted, we will invite you to the Innovation Lab. 
 The deadline of EOI submission is 7^th March 2024