Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £6 million in innovation projects. These will be for innovation in late-stage robotics and automation to increase productivity, sustainability and resilience within manufacturing processes.
The aim of this competition is to develop and demonstrate industrially ready robotics and automation solutions deployable within a factory production area.
Your proposal must:
In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.
Eligibility
Your project
Your project must:
We encourage projects that cover multiple manufacturing sectors.
You must only include eligible project costs in your application.
Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.
If your project’s total costs or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.
If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.
Lead organisation
To lead a project your organisation must:
More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.
Academic institutions and research and technology organisations (RTOs) cannot lead.
Project team
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.
To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
Non-funded partners
Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
Subcontractors
Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
Number of applications
A business can only lead on two applications within this competition but can be included as a collaborator in a further two applications.
If a business is not leading any application it can collaborate in up to four applications within this competition.
Research organisations, charities, not for profit, public sector organisations and research and technology organisations (RTO), can collaborate on any number of applications.
The aim of this competition is to develop and demonstrate industrially ready robotics and automation solutions deployable within a factory production area.
Your project must:
Your project must focus on demonstrating the robotic and automation innovations to deliver productivity, sustainability and resilience improvements to the manufacturing process.
Your project must:
We encourage you to:
Portfolio approach
We want to fund a variety of projects across different markets, research categories, strands or themes, technologies, technology maturities, locations, industrial sectors, project sizes, exploitation potential and business sizes. We call this a portfolio approach.
Specific Themes
Your project can focus on one or more of the following:
Projects are also encouraged to consider, as an element of their project:
This list is not intended to be exhaustive or limiting.
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