Since 2007, Innovate UK has invested around £2.5bn to help businesses across the country to innovate, with match funding from industry taking the total value of projects above £4.3bn.
Innovate UK has helped 8,500 organisations create around 70,000 jobs and added an estimated £18bn of value to the UK economy. In the period 2019/2020, Innovate UK received 5,794 applications for funding and made 949 awards. £645,886 was awarded in terms of funding, 24% of the total amount applied for.
Black Dox Limited Industry Sector:
Digital Solutions Blackbox Limited is a digital solutions company headquartered in London but operating globally. The company applied to Innovate UK for funding of £403,007 to enable feasibility studies to be carried out into the development of a possible analytics solution that could measure and analyse building health in real-time, integrated with real-time occupancy data and building management systems.
The Company’s innovation was INSENS- an affordable, retrofittable, real-time Indoor Environmental Sensor analytics solution to measure and analyse building health in real-time, integrated with real-time occupancy data and building management systems. The Company maintained that the solution addresses an unmet market challenge with potential to be applied to other sectors including Smart Home & Smart Transportation.
The Company was successful in the application and received funding of £282,105.
Ehabitation Limited Industry Sector
Software Development Ehabitation Limited is a software development company based in Shoreham by Sea. The Company applied to Innovate UK for funding of £173,590 for a collaborative R&D project with Connected Places Catapult, Clyde & Co LLP, Digital Catapult, BAM Nuttall and Ferrovial Corporation UK.
The project involved using IoT and DLT to automate the collection and operation of weather related clauses in standard NEC construction contracts.
The background to the project was a desire to eliminate unnecessary time and costs being incurred the parties to a contract on resolving weather related disputes in contracts by creating technology which could take hyper-localised weather readings, record this to a blockchain that all parties would agree is the digital “source of truth” and provide self-executing smart contract clauses that calculate the outputs and compensation requirements, only requiring human input if a complication arises.
The funding application was successful and the company was awarded £121,513. Overall, the collaboration received £414,021.
I3d Robotics Limited Industry Sector
3D Stereo Vision Technology & Robotics I3D Robotics Limited, a research and development based SME that develops 3D stereo vision technology to be used in machine vision applications, applied to Innovate UK for funding to carry out feasibility studies into the linking of stereo-thermal cameras with Radiofrequency identification tags/badges.
The system to be developed was to be called Thermo-PanCam. The innovation lay in the system being able to differentiate between authorised visitors and intruders in restricted locations by comparing RFID locational data with 3D heat signatures. The new technology was an advance beyond what was currently possible in that current systems that detect intruders breaching boundary fences utilise infrared technology.
The problem with infrared technology is that they consume high levels of power and bandwidth and have a high false alarm rate. In addition, they do not track the route of the intruder or threat.
The application was successful and the project received £24,750 by way of funding.
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