ARIA: novel hardware for robotic dexterity - full proposals

ARIA are looking to fund an array of cutting-edge research across robotic hardware and advanced simulation to demonstrate a paradigm-shift in robotic abilities.

Our goal: to release the bottlenecks in robotic dexterity and create vastly more capable and useful machines.

This solicitation seeks R&D Creators, individuals and teams that ARIA will fund to:

• Create one or more novel robotic manipulators, demonstrating a dexterous ability that far exceeds what’s possible today or likely to be achieved by existing approaches; substantial improvements over the status quo in both performance and robustness, while not introducing any deal breakers in terms of cost, size, infrastructure or scalability.
• Develop new techniques for designing robotic hardware and control software.
• Produce advances in relevant technologies such as actuation and haptic sensing.

Please note ARIA are no longer accepting concept papers* for this call – you will be able to submit a full proposal from 16 August to 19 September 2024.

If you missed the deadline for submission of concept papers you can still submit a full proposal. However, ARIA strongly encourage you to submit a concept paper (the call for this was open during July 2024). On average, only 8% of applicants that do not submit a concept paper are selected for award.

Who can apply?

ARIA encourage anyone to apply for funding, whether you are a Nobel scientist at a university, a junior engineer at a startup, or a polymath in your garage. ARIA funds individuals and organisations in and outside of the UK, if their work can significantly boost the success of an ARIA programme or otherwise benefit the UK.