Scoping the proposed Interdisciplinary Centre for Commercialisation and Deployment of Robotics Technologies in Health and Social care will draw on expertise of key applied-research at the University of Nottingham – the CoBot Maker Space in the School of Computer Science, The Nottingham Advanced Robotics Laboratory in Faculty of Engineering, the Centre for Health Technologies – a unique collaboration with Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust incorporating the Centre for Healthcare Equipment & Technology Adoption (CHEATA) and the Centre for Health Innovation, Leadership and Learning in the Nottingham University Business School.

The team will work in collaboration with clinicians at the Biomedical Research Centre, and innovation experts at the Nottingham Technology Entrepreneurship Centre at the University of Nottingham Innovation Park. The experience of CHEATA and the Creative Energy Homes will be strategic to delivering the robotics living lab vision. CHEATA will offer their knowledge of delivering a unique contract-based support service to clinical, academic and commercial med-tech developers to gather evidence for NHS adoption and help clients develop devices that are truly NHS-ready.

We will partner with key health and social care providers through the NUH NHS Trust, as well as organisations identified through Medilink Midlands and the regional Academic Health Science Networks (AHSN).

The project will produce a comprehensive specification for a test bed modelled as a living lab, starting with the development of a conceptual framework based on specific service robot use-cases which capture multiple perspectives and contexts.

The unique insights offered by this innovative scenario-based definition approach will be extended by considering the key enablers for realising the progression of a product into the market. The outcome from the project will be an innovative and detailed living lab test bed specification, which will include a template and framework for a flexible and mobile instrumented space realised as an animated 3d visualisation.

The design for the test bed will be particularly innovative in how it enables rapid yet comprehensive validation and benchmarking in different scenarios, specifically considering operation in unstructured home, community and hospital environments – where end-users of the service robots are likely to have a range of sensory, cognitive and mobility impairments.

This work is led by Praminda Caleb-Solly, Professor of Embodied Intelligence, University of Nottingham and funded by the Small Business Research Initiative.