World leading smart robotics, industry disrupting technologies and the next generation of augmented reality are just some of the advances in action at Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre’s Factory 2050. Launched in December 2015, Factory 2050 was set up as a reconfigurable glass walled factory of the future, and since then it has helped businesses across the country benefit from the next industrial revolution – industry 4.0. 

These include a small renewable cooling business Solar-Polar which needed to move from prototyping to manufacturing. The results were so exciting that the Peterborough based SME is seeking to become “The Uber of Cooling” creating a network of electricity free cooling devices that could revolutionise agriculture, air conditioning and medicine in developing countries. At the other end of the scale, aerospace giant BAE Systems has worked with Factory of the Future on combining human activity with robotic automation, bringing cobotics into their facilities.

Engineering Matters goes inside Factory 2050.

GUESTS

Chris Greaves, Head of Integrated Manufacturing Group, AMRC

Michael Reid, Engineering Director, Solar Polar