UK's answer to Darpa invests £23.3M in touchy-feely robots

Latest project gets the green light although Brexit-era brainchild faces spending review

The UK's version of Darpa — a US government blue-sky research body — has invested £23.3 million (c $32 million) into nine teams working to transform "robotic dexterity."

The Advanced Research and Invention Agency, or ARIA, said the research would help robots aid a growing ageing population and address intensified labor shortages.

It has teamed up with Shadow Robot Company, Ocado Technologies, and Scottish startup Touchlab in a bid to develop new hardware components and advanced robotic hands designed to position the UK as a global leader in robotics.

The total funding is part of ARIA's broader £57 million ($76 million) Robot Dexterity program, which has invested in 17 other projects. Among the awardees in the program are professor Nathan Lepora at the University of Bristol and Dr Ed Johns at Imperial College London, who will combine their expertise in creating dexterous robot hands and using AI to learn robot dexterity.

Brainchild of former prime ministerial advisor and Brexit architect Dominic Cummings, ARIA was first announced in a policy statement in March 2021. It was earmarked for £800 million ($1 billion) investment in the budget and was set to be modeled on the principles of the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), now renamed DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). ARPA was behind ARPAnet, a precursor to the internet.

Aria got off to a slow start and was not formally established until January 2023. Now it faces a new era as the UK finance minister is set to announce the five-year spending review on June 11. With the UK's Labour government currently staring at balance sheets bathed in red, it is left with the unenviable task of choosing between cuts to already-depleted public services, tax rises which nobody likes, and increased borrowing which might scare the markets. An £800 million ($1 billion) budget, largely unallocated, might seem like low-hanging fruit ripe for dexterous picking.

Nonetheless, ARIA programme director Jenny Read said:

"We know that real-world challenges need a variety of solutions. That's why we've carefully curated a portfolio of projects that embrace a broad spectrum of technical approaches. From Scottish startup Touchlab’s efforts to scale their advanced tactical sensing technology from fingertips to entire robot hands, to more speculative approaches from the University of Cambridge, we're deliberately backing diverse approaches to maximise breakthrough potential."

Aria expects the new funding to create novel hardware components, develop new robot "hands" improve control integration, and test the results in the real world. ®