Robotics in extreme environments

The Birmingham Extreme Robotics Lab (ERL) is Europe’s most prominent university lab dedicated to nuclear and other extreme environment applications of advanced robotics and AI.

Birmingham ERL researchers developed the state-of-the-art algorithms and control methods which recently achieved the first ever deployments in history of autonomous robots in nuclear sites (AI-controlled, vision-guided grasping of inactive waste materials at NNL Workington in 2016, and AI-controlled, vision-guided robotic laser-cutting of contaminated metal inside a real radioactive hot-cell at NNL Preston in 2017).

Latest news: University of Birmingham secures funding for National Centre for Nuclear Robotics

Also in 'Research'

Latest news

New cutting-edge robotic techniques in development to assist nuclear waste clean-up

Posted on 24 February 2015

A collaborative EU Horizon 2020 project including the University of Birmingham, National Nuclear Laboratories (NNL) and French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), and the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) will commence in May 2015 to develop cutting edge new robotics techniques to assist the future clean-up of legacy nuclear waste.

Read more