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 grant funding and made 949 awards. £645,886 was awarded in terms of grant funding, 24% of the total amount applied for.
WiSE Software (UK) Limited Industry Sector: Robotic Warehouse Automation
WiSE Software (UK) Limited has applied to Innovate UK for grant funding for a project that seeks to integrate robots into a company’s existing warehouse infrastructure, enabling them to automate their processes at an affordable price point. The application was successful and WiSE have received funding of £71,624.
Trusted Solutions Group Limited Industry Sector: Patient and Healthcare Transport Solution
Trusted Solutions Group Limited has applied to Innovate UK for grant funding for enable feasibility studies to be carried out into an innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform that aims to provide a community transport solution to benefit patients and pupils. The aim is to develop an AI platform that will manage transport to the NHS, social care providers and schools digitally and so improve flow, reduce the number of missed appointments and save costs. The project aims to test the viability of the AI solution with a community transport provider. Trusted Solutions received funding of £49,139 for the project.
Unmanned Systems Limited Industry Sector: Medical supplies transportation
Unmanned Systems Limited, a London based company, applied to Innovate UK for grant funding to support a collaborative R&D project that aims to conduct industrial research on deploying autonomous UAVs that deliver medical supplies (including acute medicine and some lightweight PPE) from pharmacies, securely and timely to care homes for patients fighting Covid-19. This is expected to significantly decrease the risk of infection at care homes, which is one of the most impacted sectors from the COVID-19 pandemic. Covid-19 has severely impacted all walks of human life.
Emergency services, governments and law enforcement agencies are overwhelmed in tackling Covid-19 as well as implementing strict measures to reduce the spread of the virus. The healthcare sector has come under immense pressure to save the lives of affected citizens with doctors and nurses having to work double-shifts. Unmanned Life (UML) proposes to assist governments and the healthcare sector as a whole by deploying Autonomous Delivery of Medical Supplies to Care Homes.
Currently, COVID-19 medical supplies are delivered by dedicated courier services. This process of delivering medical supplies manually is slow and inefficient resulting in the lengthy turnaround time, potential contamination of couriers and patients when collecting the medication as well as lack of operational coverage for rural areas due to a high demand within urban areas. Adding all up, the cost of such operation can be quite high resulting in more limited accessibility for those ones with limited financial resources.
By deploying autonomous drone delivery, one is able to ensure a quick turnaround time for medical supplies, reduce the contamination of couriers, increase the number of supplies delivered at a lower cost and thus save more lives.
The project received £229,409 by way of funding.
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