About the ERL

In 2017, collaborating with UK National Nuclear Lab, the ERL team delivered the world's first autonomous robot ever allowed inside a real radioactive environment - an AI controlled, computer vision guided robot arm, with autonomous motion planning, deploying a 6kW laser to cut contaminated metal (of arbitrary surface shapes) at the Springfields nuclear site. This achievement has never since been repeated by any other team on any other nuclear site world-wide.

Over the past decade, the ERL team have been prominent leaders of major national and international projects. These have included 2014-2028 €7million H2020 RoMaNS (Robotic Manipulation for Nuclear waste Sorting and Segregation), with five labs in three nations - promoted by the European Commission as their "flagship robotics project" and "European Commission Success Story". We also founded and led the £42million UK National Centre for Nuclear Robotics (NCNR), bringing together ten UK universities. NCNR published more than 400 peer reviewed papers in its first 4 years, coupled with landmark deployments of advanced robotic systems on national and international nuclear sites.

Since 2018, we have led the prominent robotics component of the UK Faraday Institute’s ongoing £17million national research hub ReLiB (Recycling Lithium Ion Batteries) in which we have demonstrated robotic disassembly of extremely complex, half-tonne Electric Vehicle battery packs. We are now expanding this work with €1.1million new robotics funding, as part of the €5million Horizon Europe REBELION consortium, and also via collaborations with industry sponsors and National Catapult Centres.

The ERL group is highly inter-disciplinary - our world-class researchers have publications spanning numerous different areas of robotics, AI, machine learning, computer vision, image processing, dynamics and control, and related areas of applied mathematics. We have particular strengths in autonomous grasping, manipulator motion planning and control, driven by real-time 3D computer vision. We are also prominent in Human-Robot and Human-AI interaction research, in which both human and AI collaborate in various ways to control remote robot arms and vehicles.

Projects

• Reuse and Recycling of Lithium-ion Batteries (ReLiB) - The overall aim of the ReLiB project is to understand the conditions required to ensure the sustainable management of lithium-ion batteries when they reach the end of their useful life in electric vehicles. Dr Rastegarpanah and Professor Stolkin lead the automation of the ReLiB project, which focuses on robotising the process of testing, disassembly, and sorting EV batteries. The ERL team have developed adaptive control strategies for multi-robots to collaboratively disassemble various EV battery packs from pack level to cell level. The Sustainable Robotic Centre (SRC) is the hearth of the ERL's pioneering industrial scale robotics.

• The National Centre for Nuclear Robotics (NCNR)
  • • 400+ peer reviewed scientific papers in four years!
    • 200+ engagement, collaboration and exchange activities with external stakeholders.
    • £8million leveraging from industry,
    • £10million institutional investment and additional funding
    • Training of 60+ early career post-doc and PhD researchers in advanced robotics for industrial applications.
    • Worldwide impact on policy, regulation and guidance to governments, nuclear agencies and operators.
    • National and international education outreach in schools to inspire the next generation of engineers and roboticists.
    • Innovation, technology transfer and commercialisation impacts across nuclear and other industries.
    • World first AI-controlled robot arm in live radioactive environment.
    • World-first deployments of autonomous drones at Chernobyl and Fukushima.

• €6.8million Robotic Manipulation for Nuclear Sort and Segregation (H2020 RoMaNS) – (leader)

• £720,000 EPSRC UK-Korea Civil Nuclear Collaboration (leader) – “Robotic system for retrieval of contaminated materials from hazardous zones”
• £1.75million EPSRC Remote Sensing in Nuclear Environments (leader)
• £5.5million (£2million to University of Birmingham) EPSRC Programme Grant – Robotics for Nuclear Environments (co-leader)
• £multi-million DISTINCTIVE nuclear consortium (participant)
• 5 nuclear-sponsored robotics/sensing PhD studentships have been won, totalling more than £half-million funding.

• £250,000 InnovateUK KTP with KUKA (KUKA is a world-leading manufacturer of industrial robot arms – UK nuclear industry is now committed to using KUKA robots)
• £130,000 Ministry of Defence (human-AI collaboration for control of remote robot vehicles)

• A.R.M Robotics Ltd
• InnovateUK LaserSnake2 – commissioned by NNL to achieve autonomous robotic laser cutting of nuclear waste
• Sellafield Ltd – advanced 3D imaging of bulging nuclear storage containers
• New InnovateUK SBRI project (collab with NNL and Bristol Robotics Lab) – Integrated robotic system for nuclear decommissioning. Now in Phase 1 of £1.5million two-phase project