The Smart Cobotics Centre’s Legacy
The Made Smarter Innovation Research Centre for Smart, Collaborative Industrial Robotics, also known as the Smart Cobotics Centre, was a collaboration between seven leading UK universities: University of Birmingham (lead), Loughborough University, University of Bristol, Cranfield University, University of Dundee, University of Strathclyde and University of Warwick. Having a wealth of research experience in manufacturing, engineering, digital technology, robotics, human-factors, verification and safety, law, psychology, systems engineering, metrology and ICT, the collaboration of these institutions was ideal for this particular project.
The Centre was built on strong relationships with a wide cross-section of 40+ industrial and research partners across core UK industrial sectors including aerospace, automotive, agri-food, green energy, construction and space, both nationally and internationally.
The Centre’s funding ended on 29th March 2025, however it’s legacy lives on in the outputs it created – most of which can be seen in our videos, our poster flipbook and the White Papers published.
Welcome to the Smart Cobotics Centre
Future smart manufacturing systems will drive productivity through smart, multi “actor” collaboration solving complex tasks. Large enterprises will benefit from this, as automation can be brought into traditionally manual production processes. Similarly, better accessibility and agility will allow more small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to benefit from automation, therefore improving their competitiveness.
Mission
The mission of the Centre is to unlock the full potential of UK industry to improve productivity and maximise growth by enabling people to achieve high quality results through collaborative automation and robotics.
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Watch our video for further information