The Prosperity Partnership model requires that research should be led by industry need, with work being co-delivered and co-created between the business and academic partners. In order to fully understand industry need, we have developed a programme of Industry Engagement Activities, or IdEAs, which is formed of three stages.
Step 1 – Challenge Identification
The CRADLE team facilitates an industry day where invited challenge holders share details of issues, ideas and challenges. This can take many forms, for example a workshop at CRADLE facilities or at a conference, with a single client, cross-sector representation or entire industry stakeholders. The aim is for the CRADLE team to gain a detailed understanding of industry challenges and their impact.
Step 2 – Concept Development
The CRADLE team analyses the outputs of stage one, identifying cross-sector commonalities, concept solutions and realistic timescales to achieve them.
Step 3 – Next Steps
Based on the concept solution developed in stage two, the CRADLE team and challenge holders reconvene to agree next steps. This may include a
demonstration of the concept, proposals for future work including technology development and/or research, the identification of funding routes, a decision to go no further, or something else.
This process is offered to industry free of charge, and offers the following benefits to challenge holders:
- The chance to share sector or company challenges, ideas or requests at a targeted industry day.
- Access to world-leading Robotics and Autonomous Systems problem solvers via a CRADLE R&D concept development activity.
- The start of a long-term relationship.
CRADLE IdEAs:
National Highways
Delivered with National Highways, CRADLE’s first IdEA explored how robotics and remote operations could make highway inspection safer and faster. Following a challenge-identification workshop, the team ran technical sprints — including a deployment at the National Highways Development Centre — trialling unmanned ground, aerial and quadruped platforms fitted with LiDAR and cameras to inspect motorway verges and gantries.
Robotic Automation of Innovative Spark Erosion
Robotic Automation of Innovative Spark Erosion, with Nottingham-based SME Scintam Engineering. Using portable EDM (electrical discharge machining) for the fast, remote removal of seized fasteners, the team integrated cameras, sensors and a controls architecture for automated bolt detection and removal, culminating in a live demonstration in a mock-up nuclear cell.
Assurance in Autonomy Workshop
CRADLE convened regulators and assurance bodies — including the HSE’s Office for Nuclear Regulation, the Rail Safety and Standards Board, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the Environment Agency and the Civil Aviation Authority — to discuss the evidence needed for assured autonomy across nuclear, ground, underwater and aerial applications, supporting a reference assurance case for autonomous inspection robots.
ESA Space Resources Challenge
As one of eight finalists, Team CRADLE-MoLES deployed a Mobile Lunar Excavation and Size Separation System in lunar-like conditions at ESA’s second Space Resources Challenge. Developed with The University of Manchester’s Space Systems Research Group, the entry paired a modular lunar rover with a stationary beneficiation system to excavate and process regolith.
Satellite Applications Catapult
CRADLE is working with the Satellite Applications Catapult around its unique ISAM (In-orbit Service and Manufacturing) Test Facility, defining formal requirements, architectural descriptions and a verification plan for multi-robot in-orbit servicing — providing a verification harness for future developments in resilient ISAM technologies.
Space Solar
Space Solar is tackling the extreme challenge of constructing a 4km space-based solar power satellite in orbit, assembled autonomously from individual structural elements. Through workshops and ongoing research, CRADLE supports requirements capture for the assembly machines and the accurate alignment, sensing and inspection of the satellite structure.
United Utilities
United Utilities manages hundreds of kilometres of ageing, confined and hazardous water-supply tunnels with no existing robotic inspection method. CRADLE adapted an aquatic robot to navigate fast-flowing tunnels and gather inspection data, and is now developing a more capable, deployment-ready platform to make tunnel inspection safer, cheaper and more repeatable.
Nuclear Grand Challenges
Part of CRADLE’s international engagement strategy through the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robotics for Nuclear Environments. A workshop with Amentum and The University of Manchester distilled experts’ input into a set of Grand Challenges spanning assurance and regulation, autonomy, environmental interaction, human-robot interaction, mobile robots and robot design.