LianaBot

Q-Bot specialises in robotic services in the built environment, that allow easier, cheaper, safer and more effective repair, maintenance and upgrade of buildings and infrastructure. Q-Bot's Installation Partners will be the end user of the system providing robot enabled services, initially in the application of inspection and treatment of small voids within buildings using a soft robot to apply insulation in an environment which is currently inaccessible for human operatives without prohibitive disruption and expense.

The current retrofit insulation service by Q-Bot is already British Board of Agrément (BBA) accredited and commercialised (with the help of a more cumbersome robot and heavy hardware) with clients from enthusiast homeowners to Local Authorities and Housing Associations. Q-Bot's robots have insulated over 800 sites successfully so far.

This project builds on ground-breaking robotics innovation in the area of soft and flexible robotic manipulators by the Centre for Advanced Robotics @ Queen Mary (ARQ), Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), initially developed for surgical applications, and a previous project funded by InnovateUK (104059). This project will develop the technology further, with a view to utilising it in inaccessible areas of buildings, and longer term in extreme and challenging environments such as infrastructure networks (including sewers) and for nuclear site inspections and decommissioning.

The project will deliver a demonstration prototype that will be validated in demanding environments as well as developing further the service robotics business model (and validating it in various industrial segments using the Lean Start-up principles). This business model has the potential to fast-forward the adoption of robotic services as it would remove the capital cost and de-risk adoption while enabling immediate performance feedback and continuous improvement (leading to faster technology improvements and further development of applications of the technology).