The nuclear industry has some of the most extreme environments in the world, with radiation levels and other hazards frequently restricting human access to facilities. Even when human entry is possible, the risks can be significant and very low levels of productivity. To date, robotic systems have had limited impact on the nuclear industry, but it is clear that they offer considerable opportunities for improved productivity and significantly reduced human risk. The nuclear industry has a vast array of highly complex and diverse challenges that span the entire industry: decommissioning and waste management, Plant Life Extension (PLEX), Nuclear New Build (NNB), small modular reactors (SMRs) and fusion. Whilst the challenges across the nuclear industry are varied, they share many similarities that relate to the extreme conditions that are present. Vitally these similarities also translate across into other environments, such as space, oil and gas and mining, all of which, for example, have challenges associated with radiation (high energy cosmic rays in space and the presence of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) in mining and oil and gas). Major hazards associated with the nuclear industry include radiation; storage media (for example water, air, vacuum); lack of utilities (such as lighting, power or communications); restricted access; unstructured environments. These hazards mean that some challenges are currently intractable in the absence of solutions that will rely on future capabilities in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (RAI). Reliable robotic systems are not just essential for future operations in the nuclear industry, but they also offer the potential to transform the industry globally. In decommissioning, robots will be required to characterise facilities (e.g. map dose rates, generate topographical maps and identify materials), inspect vessels and infrastructure, move, manipulate, cut, sort and segregate waste and assist operations staff. To support the life extension of existing nuclear power plants, robotic systems will be required to inspect and assess the integrity and condition of equipment and facilities and might even be used to implement urgent repairs in hard to reach areas of the plant. Similar systems will be required in NNB, fusion reactors and SMRs. Furthermore, it is essential that past mistakes in the design of nuclear facilities, which makes the deployment of robotic systems highly challenging, do not perpetuate into future builds. Even newly constructed facilities such as CERN, which now has many areas that are inaccessible to humans because of high radioactive dose rates, has been designed for human, rather than robotic intervention. Another major challenge that RAIN will grapple with is the use of digital technologies within the nuclear sector. Virtual and Augmented Reality, AI and machine learning have arrived but the nuclear sector is poorly positioned to understand and use these rapidly emerging technologies. RAIN will deliver the necessary step changes in fundamental robotics science and establish the pathways to impact that will enable the creation of a research and innovation ecosystem with the capability to lead the world in nuclear robotics. While our centre of gravity is around nuclear we have a keen focus on applications and exploitation in a much wider range of challenging environments.

The long-term evolution of energy systems is set by the investment decisions of very many actors such as up-stream resource companies, power plant operators, network infrastructure providers, vehicle owners, transport system operators and building developers and occupiers. But these decisions are deliberately shaped by markets and incentives that have been designed by local and national governments to achieve policy objectives on energy, air-quality, economic growth and so on. It is clear then that government and businesses need detailed and dependable evidence of what can be achieved, what format of energy system we should aim for, what new technologies need to be encouraged, and how energy systems can form part of an industrial strategy to new goods and services. It is widely accepted that a whole-system view of energy is needed, covering not only multiple energy sectors (gas, heat, electricity and transport fuel) but also the behaviour of individuals and organisations within the energy consuming sectors such as transport and the built environment. This means that modelling energy production, delivery and use in a future integrated system is highly complex and analytically challenging. To provide evidence to government and business on what an optimised future system may look like, one has to rise to these modelling challenges. For electricity systems alone, there are established models that can optimise for security, cost and emissions given some assumptions (and sensitivities) and these have been used to provide policy and business strategy evidence. However, such models do not exist for the complex interactions of integrated systems and not at the level of fine detailed needed to expose particularly difficult operating conditions. Our vision is to tackle the very challenging modelling required for integrated energy systems by combining multi-physics optimising techno-economic models with machine learning of human behaviour and operational models emerging multi-carrier network and conversion technologies. The direction we wish to take is clear but there are many detailed challenges along the way for which highly innovative solutions will be needed to overcome the hurdles encountered. The programme grant structure enables us to assemble an exceptional team of experts across many disciplines. There are new and exciting opportunities, for instance, to apply machine learning to identify in a quantitative way models of consumer behaviour and responsiveness to incentives that can help explore demand-side flexibility within an integrated energy system. We have engaged four major partners from complementary sectors of the energy system that will support the programme with significant funding (approximately 35% additional funding) and more importantly engage with us and each other to share insights, challenges, data and case studies. EDF Energy provide the perspective on an energy retail business and access to smart meter trail data. Shell provide insights into the future fuels to be used in transport and building services. National Grid (System Operator) give the perspective of the use of flexibility and new service propositions for efficient system operations. ABB are a provider of data acquisition and control systems and provide industrial perspective of decentralisation of control. ABB have committed to providing substantial equipment and resource to build a verification and demonstration facility for decentralised control. We are also engaging examples of the new entrants, often smaller companies with potentially disruptive technologies and business models, who will engage and share some of their insights.

The UK electricity system faces challenges of unprecedented proportions. It is expected that 35 to 40% of the UK electricity demand will be met by renewable generation by 2020, an order of magnitude increase from the present levels. In the context of the targets proposed by the UK Climate Change Committee it is expected that the electricity sector would be almost entirely decarbonised by 2030 with significantly increased levels of electricity production and demand driven by the incorporation of heat and transport sectors into the electricity system. The key concerns are associated with system integration costs driven by radical changes on both the supply and the demand side of the UK low-carbon system. Our analysis to date suggests that a low-carbon electricity future would lead to a massive reduction in the utilisation of conventional electricity generation, transmission and distribution assets. The large-scale deployment of energy storage could mitigate this reduction in utilisation, producing significant savings. In this context, the proposed research aims at (i) developing novel approaches for evaluating the economic and environmental benefits of a range of energy storage technologies that could enhance efficiency of system operation and increase asset utilization; and (ii) innovation around 4 storage technologies; Na-ion, redox flow batteries (RFB), supercapacitors, and thermal energy storage (TES). These have been selected because of their relevance to grid-scale storage applications, their potential for transformative research, our strong and world-leading research track record on these topics and UK opportunities for exploitation of the innovations arising. At the heart of our proposal is a whole systems approach, recognising the need for electrical network experts to work with experts in control, converters and storage, to develop optimum solutions and options for a range of future energy scenarios. This is essential if we are to properly take into account constraints imposed by the network on the storage technologies, and in return limitations imposed by the storage technologies on the network. Our work places emphasis on future energy scenarios relevant to the UK, but the tools, methods and technologies we develop will have wide application. Our work will provide strategic insights and direction to a wide range of stakeholders regarding the development and integration of energy storage technologies in future low carbon electricity grids, and is inspired by both (i) limitations in current grid regulation, market operation, grid investment and control practices that prevent the role of energy storage being understood and its economic and environmental value quantified, and (ii) existing barriers to the development and deployment of cost effective energy storage solutions for grid application. Key outputs from this programme will be; a roadmap for the development of grid scale storage suited to application in the UK; an analysis of policy options that would appropriately support the deployment of storage in the UK; a blueprint for the control of storage in UK distribution networks; patents and high impact papers relating to breakthrough innovations in energy storage technologies; new tools and techniques to analyse the integration of storage into low carbon electrical networks; and a cohort of researchers and PhD students with the correct skills and experience needed to support the future research, development and deployment in this area.

This project focuses on a radical change to chemical manufacturing with a view to effective step changes in environmental sustainability and in circularity of materials. We shall focus on the emerging electrochemical sector which is expected to grow strongly and within which there are many opportunities for the deployment of digital technologies to underpin system design and operation. In response to this call, we have united a cross-disciplinary team of leading researchers from three UK universities (Imperial College, Loughborough, and Heriot-Watt) to create a digital circular electrochemical economy. The chemical sector is a "hard to decarbonise" sector. Its high embedded carbon comes from two aspects: (1) the intensive energy use; and (2) the use of fossil feedstock. Therefore, the decarbonisation requires the substitution of both two with renewable energy (electrifying the chemical processes) and feedstock (e.g., H2O, CO2). We foresee a closer integration of the electrical energy system with the industrial chemistry system, with the former providing reducing energy formerly available in fossil fuels and which enables the processing of highly oxidised but abundant feedstocks. The intermittency of renewable electricity supply and the economic benefits of flexible processing and closer integration between these two sectors will give rise to opportunities for new digital technologies. These will enable improved design and operation of emerging electrochemical processing technologies and provide new pathways to chemical building blocks (e.g. olefins) and fuels. The integration of the sectors also provides opportunities for cost savings in the electrical system through improved flexibility and demand management. We propose three work packages (WP) to look at the challenges at different levels, and finally integrate as a whole solution: - WP1 Digital twins of key electrochemical operation units and processes. - WP2 Digitalisation of the value chain encompassing the integration between the chemical and electrical systems - WP3 Policy, Society and Finance, including business models to capture value generation opportunities from industrial integration

The aerospace industry is the key sector for growth of the UK economy. The potential market share of the UK, which is specialised in the most complicated and high tech aircraft parts, is estimated to be around $600 billion. This enormous market demand was also driven by the environmental issue, which requires the lightweight composite aircraft structures to meet the future CO2 emission regulations. The automated fibre placement (AFP) process is the core technology that underpins the UK's aerospace industry. This process can lay up carbon fibre tape (or tow) materials on a three dimensional mould surface using a robotic or a computer-controlled gantry machine at high speed, which is mainly used in the aerospace industry to manufacture composite structural components such as fuselages, wings, and spars. The AFP machine's capability of feeding individual tows at different speeds enables steering the fibres within the tows along curved paths, and such fibre steering allows for manufacturing composite structures with complex geometry as well as realising ultra-high structural efficiency beyond the limit of the conventional straight fibre lay-up design. However, it has a few fundamental limitations in fibre steering to produce complex composite components. First, since the AFP machine steers the fibres by bending the tow tape, fibre-buckling defects are always generated. Second, it needs to frequently cut the tows when laying up on a doubly-curved surface that cannot be perfectly tessellated with the finite width tows, which also creates defects such as fibre discontinuity and resin pockets. Such process-induced defects are a critical barrier that reduces the production speed and complicates the design process in the aerospace industry. Furthermore, as the shape of the composite components becomes more complex, the minimisation of such defects in fibre steering process is getting more important. This project aims to develop a new game-changing fibre placement technology that can produce defect-free doubly-curved composite components, based on fundamental understanding of the impregnation and deformation characteristics of tow materials. The new head mechanism to be developed will be capable of producing variable width tows on-the-fly to cover tessellated sections of a complex 3D surface without gaps. The scientific knowledge on tow-level deformation characteristics will be integrated with an advanced head mechanisms as well as a new head control algorithm in order to realise the buckling free fibre steering using the continuous tow shearing mechanism on complex 3D surfaces. Finally, a prototype head will be tested on a robotic platform programmed using the developed head control algorithm, and the lay-up quality and accuracy will be evaluated using various inspection methods. This establishes a proof-of-concept manufacturing process for complex 3D composite components. Although the industry is making various attempts to solve the quality problems by modifying the process parameters or the tow material, there are no existing AFP technologies that can either steer the tow without defects or control the tow width. The successful development of this unique and disruptive AFP process will provide the UK aerospace industry with a fundamental solution to the quality problems that they are facing, which enable the UK to be at the forefront of next-generation automated composites manufacturing technology.