£5m RAS competition

Innovate UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council have together announced a £5m competition to boost the development of RAS (robotics and autonomous systems), hoping that such a prize may encourage businesses to develop autonomous technology for novel applications, and boosting the UK economy at the same time.

Proposals for the funding, which is to be split among a number of winning projects, can be hardware (e.g. a robot) or software (e.g. a learning system) and should last between 6 and 15 months.

Innovate UK are “looking for proposals that will speed up the development of RAS technologies towards demonstration and commercialisation” and believe that developing robots that can learn, adapt and make decisions could have a profound and revolutionary effect on the British economy and society over the next 20 years.

Registration is open until midday on 19th October 2016, with final submissions by 26th October 2016.

Information on how to apply is here.