Major grants to develop robotics and sustainable energy technologies

Ways of storing energy from sustainable sources and improving surgical robotic technology are projects receiving funds from the UK Government.

The projects received a combined total of £18.3 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and were announced this week by David Willets, Minister for Universities and Science. Imperial College London is one of 20 universities across the UK to receive funds for research that has been identified by the Government as future drivers of UK growth.

The researchers are developing new ways of storing energy from wind farms

Professor Nigel Brandon, Director of Imperial’s Energy Futures Lab, has been awarded a £14.3 million project to develop new technologies for storing energy captured from low carbon sources, such as wind farms and nuclear reactors, so that it can be used more effectively by the UK’s electricity grid.  He will lead a group of ten universities in the project.

Professor Guang-Zhong Yang, co-director of the College’s Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, will take the helm of a £4 million project that will establish new engineering facilities for developing miniaturised robots for surgery and new types of targeted therapies for patients.

Sir Keith O’Nions, Rector & President of Imperial College London, says: “Imperial is a great driver of innovation and entrepreneurship and these two projects exemplify some of the technologies that could successfully power the UK’s economy well into the future.  I look forward to seeing how they progress. Developing better surgical robots could pave the way for their wider use, which should mean better outcomes for patients, and creating better ways for storing green energy should put the UK on a much more sustainable path in terms of our power usage.”

“For Britain to get ahead in the global race we have to back emerging technologies and ensure our universities have the latest equipment,” added David Willets. "This capital investment will help scientists make new discoveries and take their research through to commercial success. It will drive growth and support the Government’s industrial strategy.”

Greener energy grid

As  more  renewable sources are planned to be used, one of the current challenges in the energy industry is finding new and improved ways of storing the energy so that it can be used to meet peaks in demand. For example, wind farms only produce electricity intermittently, but it might not be needed at the time of generation, so a challenge for engineers is to find ways to cost effectively store the energy for later use.

New types of energy storage devices such as batteries and thermal energy stores will be needed, along with new ways to manufacture and integrate these devices into energy systems.

Professor Brandon and his partners will establish a new UK Centre for Grid Scale Storage at the College, which will work alongside industry.  They will investigate new types of materials and manufacturing methods that will enable them to create energy storage devices such as redox flow batteries. This is a type of battery suitable for storing large amounts of energy from wind farms.

Surgical robotics

Medical robotic systems, whether to be used for minimally invasive surgery, targeted therapy, emergency response, prosthetics or home assistance, represents one of the fastest growing sectors in medical devices industry.

Professor Yang and his team will use the EPSRC funds to establish a new facility at the Hamlyn Centre that will enable precision micro-engineering of new devices. In one of the projects, the researchers will experiment with new materials and miniaturised mechanisms for surgical robotics. The aim is to speed up design and manufacture times, ultimately meaning that these devices could be produced more cheaply and become more widely accessible.