Robotics Growth Partnership Unveils Cyber-Physical Infrastructure Strategy

The RGP’s 65-page “Vision for CPI” has a lot in it but recognises the importance of data, smart machines, AI, virtual labs, fintech and a lot more.

The Robotics Growth Partnership (RGP) has the finance, healthcare and logistics sectors on its mind with the launch of its cyber-physical infrastructure (CPI) plan.

Announced today (11 February), the idea is to bring together physical and digital tools for innovation and reduce costs for companies to prototype, test and develop ideas.

Science Minister George Freeman explains: “Advances in connected digital and physical technologies are allowing us to create new tools and models to better predict and manage future global shocks from climate change to pandemics, test innovation in real time and drive UK leadership in new approaches to agile regulatory testbeds.”

The RGP was established by the UK government in 2019, with the aim of profiting from smart robotics. It brings together representatives from across industry, academia, and government to determine how smart machines will be able to support the UK’s economic recovery from the pandemic and help with its ‘Net Zero’ ambitions.

The RGP’s 65-page “Vision for CPI” has a lot in it but recognises the “significance” of data – particularly real-time data for national systems and infrastructure; and lays the groundwork for the commitments made in its ‘Innovation Strategy’.

This document is principally the product of 18 months of public and private workshops, review, networking and discussion by members of the RGP.

To keep it reasonably brief, there are some points of note in the document for the B2B industry.

The CPI’s “strands” include crowdsourcing real-time data from sensors, citizens and other sources; and new frameworks for building simulations, emulations, visualisations, semantic maps and digital shadows / twins (i.e., a virtual representation of an object or system that spans its lifecycle). The idea here is to complement existing commercial tools and make these technologies an accessible commodity, especially for startups, SMEs and the public sector.

The CPI also welcomes virtual labs as a distinct reality to enable researchers to collaborate remotely.

Another strand is the idea of “pre-competitive” shared hardware and software building blocks for creating all manner of new smart machines. The latter being robots with embedded intelligence, which comes from a blend of sensing (often including vision), actuation, computing power and AI.

In fact, yesterday (10 February) – and in separate news – up to £23 million in government funding was announced to “create more AI and data conversion courses”. This funding is designed for young people from underrepresented groups including women, black people and people with disabilities.

As noted above, the finance, healthcare and logistics sectors are mentioned in the CPI.

For instance, the document talks about finance and the “advent and adoption of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens within distributed blockchain implementations”.

UK fintech firms may find opportunities here as the document discusses the “potential to massively reduce the friction in transacting value of assets and services, enabling ubiquitous and international access”.

In terms of healthcare, the concept of digital shadows / twins of patients, primary care, hospitals and trusts is of interest.

While for logistics, swarms of clean-energy powered smart machines would be both autonomous and orchestrated by smart services, powered by digital shadows / twins and AI.

Other sectors of interest to the CPI include food, leisure, autonomous vehicles, aerospace and defence.

Antony Peyton
Antony Peyton
Antony Peyton is the Editor of eWeek UK. He has 18 years' journalism and writing experience. His career has taken him to China, Japan and the UK - covering tech, fintech and business. Follow on Twitter @TonyFintech.
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