A consortium of five universities, working with 31 industrial and innovation partners, will deploy up to £36 million of support to advance robotics and Artificial Intelligence technologies for the inspection, repair, maintenance and certification of offshore energy platforms and assets.
Over £14.3 million of funding will come from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) with up to £18 m from 31 industry partners. The university consortium will contribute a further £3.6 million.
Professor Sethu Vijayakumar from the University of Edinburgh is Deputy Director of the ORCA Hub. He said, “The UK’s offshore energy sector is currently worth £40 billion and supports 440 000 jobs as well as having a supply chain of an additional £6 billion in goods and services exports. To ensure that the UK’s offshore oil and renewable energy fields remain economically viable, it is essential to develop more productive and agile products and services that UK SMEs, start-ups and the existing supply chain can export internationally.