ROBOTS are continuing their indefatigable path into our everyday lives, and a project to use them to make offshore inspections and repair safer has just secured £2.5 million funding boost.

The cash from UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) comes a day after Health Secretary Humza Yousaf announced a £20m investment in surgical robots to help treat cancer patients.

Led by Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh, the Orca Hub, which was founded four years ago and includes Imperial College London, Liverpool and Oxford Universities, is supporting energy transition and the growth of renewable energy – one of the strategic projects within the National Robotarium.

The hub’s aim is to help the offshore energy industry use robots to safely inspect, maintain and repair platforms, wind turbines, and other infrastructure, guided by human experts on ships or onshore.

Some £600,000 of the new funding will help to deliver six demonstration projects with industrial partners, including the inspection of wind turbine foundations and the deployment of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensors.

The remaining £1.9m will fund an extension of Orca Hub’s activities to see if technologies and processes it develops can be used in other sectors, ranging from construction and urban infrastructure through to decommissioning and waste management.

Yvan Petillot, professor of robotics and autonomous systems at Heriot-Watt and co-academic lead of the National Robotarium, has been appointed as Orca’s new director, taking over from Professor David Lane, founding director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics.

Petillot said: “Robots have the potential to carry out inspection and maintenance in hazardous environments, reducing the risks of putting divers into the water in harsh conditions or workers operating at height on wind turbines.

“Finding ways to combine the flexibility of autonomous robots with remote human operators has been one of the key strands in my career over the past 20 years.

“The international offshore energy industry is undergoing a revolution, adopting aggressive net-zero objectives, and shifting rapidly towards large scale offshore wind energy production.”

In its first project for the hub, the Spot robot will be deployed on construction sites, collecting data and measurements in real time.

This will allow multiple parties, regardless of location to access and review the data, building greater understanding of the construction process and allowing companies to identify new efficiencies, potential hazards and quality control measures.

Lane added: “Since the Orca Hub was launched, its successes have been wide ranging from launching tech that can help humans and robots to speak the same language to autonomous drones that can inspect offshore turbines.

“However, research of this type can only have impact if it is driven by and addresses specific industry needs.

“Significant industry engagement has been achieved since 2017 with 68 individual research projects, PhD sponsorships, user engagements, and supply of equipment, hardware, software, data and asset samples taking place with a further 16 projects currently in discussion or pending approval with an estimated value of over £6m.

“We’ve spun-out a company and two more are in the process of spin-out, alongside two patent applications enabling developments to be licensed to companies.”