The Junction Box: The hidden secrets of UK automation start ups
24 May 2019
In his second column, exclusive to Connectivity, Richard Stone, the founder of Stone Junction – the first PR agency for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, asks whether the UK is about to see a boom in automation start-ups, which might just kick start the economy.
The United Kingdom and the vanguard of the automation industry; two concepts that don’t normally sit comfortably together. As a nation, we have a reputation for being laggards in the adoption of new technology, particularly automation.
It’s over three decades since Margaret Thatcher opened Automan ‘81 and said, “The more robots British industry uses, the greater will be our experience and the more effective the feedback into the second and third generations of robots now being planned. The rewards there will be even greater.”
In 2019, 37 years later, the UK has no large volume robot manufacturers. What is more, I think that manufacturing is much further down the political agenda than it was in 1981. Can you imagine Theresa May opening an event for BARA now, for instance?
There is a clear Government commitment to manufacturing that is close to the consumer, represented by Theresa May’s key Brexit statement delivered from Portmeirion’s Stoke manufacturing site in January for instance. But supporting the people who make the parts for the machines that make the machines? Less likely.
Cool automation
We do have a lot of low volume and cool robot companies though, from The Shadow Robot Company to Cambridge Medical Robotics, both of whom have developed strong reputations already. What is more, there is a new generation of automation start-ups out there, often funded by Britbots; an investment group founded in 2016 that specialises in funding for ‘automatisation’ and AI companies.
One such Britbots funded company, is Bristol based Quantum Light Metrology – which has developed a quantum sensing solution capable of remotely detecting methane leaks from well-heads and pipes at a 100-metre operational distance. It’s mounted on a drone, which travels at 30mph, so I’m counting that as super-cool.
Another great start up automation business is The Small Robot Company, an agri-tech firm that replaces tractors with, well, small robots. For instance, they have a machine called Tom, which gathers data on crops, identifies disease and nutrient issues and shares the information with an AI called Wilma.
The farmer can even use recordings from the robot’s vision system to zoom in on specific plants for a human visual check. The future for the company is delivering robots that can see, weed and feed individual plants without damaging the others in a field.
Perhaps my favourite of this sceptred isle’s automation innovators though, is London based robot manufacturer Automata, which makes collaborative robots for small companies and small SMEs, pitched at £5,000 per machine. Now, the business is making tens of robots per month, but hopes to reach hundreds of robots per month by the end of 2019. Watch this space.
What’s holding us back?
So, what is holding UK Automation Plc back if our innovators are so damn innovative? If we have companies modernising and investing like this, why haven’t we yet fulfilled Thatcher’s vision of productivity, which she outlined at Automan ’81?
Well, we don’t like to boast in the UK, do we? If you look at the German automation sector, and even the famously robophobic US, they are keen to tell the world about their start-ups, a few of whom I mentioned in my last column.
Furthermore, the US and the rest of Europe has a better angel investor and investment banking infrastructure than we do in the UK, where we tend to be a little bit more bootstrapped in our approach to entrepreneurship. But, by itself, that’s not the root cause of the country not leading the world in automation and robotics.
We also fear automation and, because controversy is more newsworthy than accord, when a new survey is published saying that robots will take our jobs, we, in the media, make it into a headline. Last year, just such a survey said that 45 percent of jobs in my own region, Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, would be filled by robots by 2030.
However, when I surveyed a bunch of robots to see what they thought, they told me they had no intention of moving to Stoke and we could keep our jobs.
Government and the B word also must accept some culpability for the problem. The last three years has seen UK manufacturing strategy and implementation run by civil servants. Meanwhile, Government and its shadow argue over whether Theresa May should resign before her Brexit policy fails to be passed or after her Brexit policy fails to be passed. I’m sure you will agree this is substantially more important than ensuring our economic future, by positioning the UK as a global leader in knowledge engineering.
Kickstarting the economy
So, I’ve blamed funding and I’ve blamed the Government, but I haven’t yet looked inwards towards the automation business community and asked what we’ve done wrong. The answer is, I think we’ve been much too quiet.
The innovation is there, we just need to tell the world about it. But I would say that wouldn’t I? I run a PR agency; my business is telling the world about automation.
However, the reason I work in automation, and more widely STEM, is that I’m passionate about it. It will feed the world, thanks to organisations like The Small Robot Company. It will power the world, if Quantum Light Metrology and their like have anything to say on the subject. And it will free humanity for a more fulfilling future – especially if we embrace the likes of Automata.
I work in PR because I’m passionate about that as well. PR raises nations, gets Governments elected and brings businesses to the peak of their success. It can do the opposite too though; bring companies to their knees, ruin politicians and change the view the rest of the world has about an entire country.
Combining these two powerful forces to encourage and nurture our start-ups, shouting about them from the global rooftops of manufacturing, could kick start our economy. So, what are we waiting for?
Richard Stone is the founder of Stone Junction, a specialist technical PR agency delivering international and digital PR and marketing services for scientific, engineering and technology companies. He loves controversy, Stoke-on-Trent (especially the oatcakes) and getting emails, so send him a note on richards@stonejunction.co.uk. He’s not a huge fan of Margaret Thatcher, but he thinks she did have her head screwed on about robots.
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