Independent Journalism • Global Truth
The UK government will roll out eight Robotics Adoption Hubs backed by £40m in funding, announced by AI Minister Kanishka Narayan. Hubs include Newcastle's SHARP for robotic-assisted surgery and Lincoln's £6.3m HARVEST for agri-food automation. Maximised adoption could add £150bn to the economy by 2035.
The UK government has unveiled a £40 million programme to put robotics at the heart of British industry and public services, announcing eight Robotics Adoption Hubs across the country on Friday. The hubs — backed by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology — will help businesses and public bodies test, evaluate and introduce robotic and autonomous systems, from surgical robots in hospitals to fruit-picking machines on farms.
The announcement was made by Kanishka Narayan, the Minister for AI, during a visit to the Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology, home of the £6.3 million HARVEST hub for agri-food robotics. "Quicker recovery for patients, more time for businesses to focus on the work that makes a real difference, and more food on our tables — that's the impact cutting-edge robotics technology can have up and down the country," he said, according to the BBC's report. Further details of the minister's announcement were carried by Labour Home.
The government estimates that maximising the adoption of robotics and autonomous systems could add £150 billion to the UK economy by 2035 — a figure HotMinute highlighted in its coverage — compared with an estimated current contribution of just £6.4 billion, according to RobotToday: a gap the new network is designed to close. Each hub will offer practical advice, hands-on demonstrations and help with assessing costs, suitable technologies and finance options, connecting potential users with suppliers and specialist support.
!A robotic arm on a modern manufacturing production line.
A robotic arm in a manufacturing facility. Image: Lexington Medical, Inc, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The eight hubs span the country and the economy. In Newcastle, the SHARP hub will help healthcare providers adopt robotic-assisted surgery, where surgeons operate through small incisions guided by robotic arms — promising less invasive procedures and faster recoveries for patients. In Lincoln, the HARVEST hub will support the agri-food sector with tools such as automated fruit-picking and weeding robots, aimed at lifting productivity and reducing reliance on seasonal labour.
Other hubs cover the Greater South West, Milton Keynes, Yorkshire (Bradford and Huddersfield), Wales — the Hwb Llwybr Roboteg Cymru — and South Wales (Swansea). The National Waste and Recycling Robotics Adoption Hub (NORAH), led by Kingston University in the South East with £3.6 million of funding, will help waste and recycling sites test robots that can recover more materials, send less to landfill and create skilled jobs in one of the most technically challenging industrial environments.
In the Greater South West, a £9.8 million regional programme led by the Bristol Robotics Laboratory — with £7.2 million from Innovate UK and £2.6 million from 23 industry, academic and local-government partners — will provide one-to-one business advice on navigating the route from curiosity to adoption and return on investment.
The hubs will be judged on outcomes, not announcements. Key tests in the coming years: whether NHS trusts beyond the early adopters take up robotic-assisted surgery through SHARP; whether HARVEST moves Lincolnshire's growers from demonstrations to deployed fleets; whether the NORAH hub can make automation work in the punishing environment of waste sorting; and whether the national coordinating body can turn eight regional experiments into a coherent national capability.
If they succeed, the UK could begin the shift the National Robotarium has long called for: from being a consumer of other countries' robotics to a producer and technology leader. The global robotics market is projected to reach £218 billion by 2030 — a prize worth competing for. Friday's announcement is the government's opening bid.
For more on the technology economy, see our coverage of Samsung's AI-driven record profits and the OpenAI researchers dismissed over mishandled information. Our business coverage is collected on the Business page, the research behind the machines on our Science page, and the latest stories on our homepage.
Eight regional hubs across the UK, backed by £40m in government funding, that will help businesses and public services test and introduce robotics and autonomous systems. They offer practical advice, hands-on demonstrations, help with assessing costs and technologies, and connections to suppliers and finance providers — focused on adoption of proven systems rather than new research.
Announced hubs include Newcastle (SHARP, robotic-assisted surgery), Lincoln (£6.3m HARVEST, agri-food robotics), the Greater South West, Milton Keynes, Yorkshire (Bradford/Huddersfield), Wales (Hwb Llwybr Roboteg Cymru), South Wales (Swansea), and a National Waste and Recycling hub (NORAH) led by Kingston University in the South East.
Because Britain's robotics problem is deployment, not invention. The UK ranks 24th globally for robots per manufacturing worker, and Germany alone installed eight times more robots than the entire UK in 2023. Ministers argue that closing the adoption gap could add up to £150bn to the economy by 2035.
A further £2.5m for 12 robotics training and skills projects, funding for a national coordinating body, and a separate £20m funding competition to accelerate agricultural robotics — a sector hit by seasonal labour shortages.
The government's pitch is that robots will free staff for higher-value work rather than replace them — the waste-sector hub explicitly promises skilled jobs alongside automation. But the history of industrial automation suggests the effects on employment will need close watching.
Recent graduates are turning to AI to fire off hundreds of job applications at once — but new research shows employers are increasingly wise to the tactic, and that using AI to misrepresent yourself can do more harm than good.
Anthropic has told prospective investors its third-quarter revenue surged 45% to $16.8 billion, as CEO Dario Amodei courts institutional backers ahead of an anticipated IPO that could value the AI developer at more than $2 trillion.
Nearly eight decades after the original debuted in Paris, Citroën is bringing back the 2CV — this time as a lightweight electric city car aimed at a €15,000 starting price, as European brands fight back against cheap Chinese rivals.
Diesel has smashed records on both sides of the Atlantic. BBC Verify crunched the export data to settle the argument over whether Iran or Ukraine deserves the blame — and the answer is not the one the White House has been pushing.