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Empowering UK and global industries with advanced Robotics and Autonomous Systems


In just 12 months, the centre has become a vital hub where academia and industry collaborate to address complex robotics and autonomous systems challenges across various sectors.

View or download the CRADLE Year One Annual Report below:

The CRADLE Prosperity Partnership brings together the industrial experience that Amentum has in applied Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) with the research expertise at The University of Manchester in this field to create a collaborative research centre that is internationally leading and sustainable in the long term.

Delivering

  • Deployment of novel autonomous robotic solutions, securing additional funding, and accelerating commercialisation and spin-outs.
  • Enhanced international research and development profile.
  • Impact and influence on standards and policy.
    Community building and outreach.
  • Robust talent pipeline.
  • Self-sustaining technology research centre, stimulating a stream of new, fundamental research.

Research Themes

  • Resilience and predictability of hardware.
  • Transparency and flexibility of software.
  • Trust and understanding of human and environmental interaction.
  • Assured autonomous system safety and security.
  • Intelligent robot design and deployment.

Bringing together the industrial experience of Amentum with the research expertise at The University of Manchester, established an internationally leading and sustainable collaborative research centre delivering novel and transformational robotics and autonomous systems technology for demanding environments.

The University of Manchester

The Centre for Robotics and AI is an internationally recognised centre of excellence, delivering impactful world-leading research in the area of robotics and autonomous systems for real-world applications that benefit society.

Amentum

Innovative integration of robotics and autonomous systems technologies, delivering value to clients by solving the most challenging problems across a wide range of sectors.

Focusing on the most demanding and long-lasting environments, working to remove humans from harm.


Work Package 1 – Components

Improving the reliability of sub-systems to ensure mission success in resilient robot autonomy.

Research Themes:

  1. Robust Sensor Fusion
  2. Human-Understandable Confidence Metrics
  3. Risk-Aware Motion Planning and Control
  4. Modelling and Control of Complex Robotics Systems

Academic Leads: Bruno Adorno and Keir Groves

Industry Lead: Marti Morta-Garriga

Work Package 2 – Architectures

Designing resilient and verifiable software architectures for the reliable deployment of autonomous robots in demanding and long-lasting scenarios.

Research Themes:

  1. Architectural Transparency
  2. Mechanisms for Robot Collectives
  3. System Aware Architectures

Academic Lead: Michael Fisher

Industry Lead: John Brotherhood

Work Package 3 – Interactions

Enhancing collaboration by addressing challenges in human and robot interactions for trustworthy and effective teamwork.

Research Themes:

  1. Robots to Humans
  2. Humans to Robots
  3. From One to Many

Academic Lead: Angelo Cangelosi

Industry Lead: Kathryn Mearns

Work Package 4 – Assurance

Generating better evidence and arguments for ethical, safe, and secure design and implementation of robotics and autonomous systems.

Research Themes:

  1. Evidence Generation
  2. Informing Future Standards
  3. Design for Assurance

Academic Lead: Louise Dennis

Industry Leads: Frederic Wheeler, John Mackey and Harry Newton

Work Package 5 – Demonstrators

Showcasing next-generation solutions in a range of cyber-physical environments leading to the deployment of robotic platforms in the real world.

Research Themes:

  1. Requirements and Benchmarking Analysis
  2. Design Tool Chains
  3. Simulated Environments
  4. Cyber-Physical Mission Environments

Academic Lead: Simon Watson

Industry Lead: Matthew Goundry