Metris benefits from Technology Strategy Board funding

All together the 11 projects are receiving funding of £15 million, of which £7 million comes from the TSB, £750,000 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, while the participating companies will invest the balance of £7 million. All 11 projects relate to data gathering and the project in which Metris is involved is for a co-ordinate measuring robot The aim is to develop an accurate, repeatable and flexible in-line inspection solution for complex production line environments. Key objectives are to provide co-ordinate measuring machine accuracy and repeatability with the flexibility of manual measurement arms, enabling 100 per cent real-time inspection, and accommodating complex production environments. Other partners in this project include Tata Motors European Technical Centre (TMETC) PLC, WMG at the University of Warwick. Explaining the decision to invest in these projects, the Technology Strategy Board’s director of innovation programmes, David Bott, said: “The ability to gather information in complex or difficult environments is vital in a wide range of industry and service sectors, such as pollution monitoring, power generation, the aerospace industry and buildings management. Many UK companies have particular strengths in sensing, instrumentation and imaging technologies, and in telecommunications and intelligent systems. Bringing this expertise together will help give the UK the capability to exploit the worldwide demand for tracking, data gathering and monitoring technologies. “ Since August, the Board has announced that it will invest nearly £80 million in over 120 projects in cell therapy, material technologies for energy, high value manufacturing, low carbon energy technologies, advanced lighting & lasers, data protection & privacy, technologies for assisted living, healthcare technologies and, now, data gathering. Including contributions from the research councils and match funding from the private sector, this brings the total investment in these new government-backed UK research and development projects to about £160 million.