How can engineers ride the new advanced technology wave to benefit their manufacturing sites?

In his role as Executive Chair of leading trade body Automate UK, Peter is looking to use his 25 years of experience in robotics and automation to support end users in adopting the latest in automation technology and to help raise awareness of the benefits that automation can bring to UK manufacturing. His experience comes from RARUK Automation, a company he formed in 2016 that is now a world leading supplier of collaborative robots (or cobots), and for which he is also now a non-executive director.

Mike has over 40 years of experience in the application of automation to manufacturing across a broad range of industry sectors and is widely recognised as one of the leading authorities on the application of industrial robot systems in the UK. At the MTC, he is leading the drive to increase the adoption of robotics and automation in the UK. He is also a Director of the Manufacturing Technologies Association, Council member and past Chairman of the British Automation and Robot Association and has previously been Chairman of the International Federation of Robotics.

Nathan is a Professor of Robotics & AI who leads the Dexterous Robotics Group in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory at the University of Bristol. He originally trained as a mathematician at the University of Cambridge then continued to a PhD and Research Fellowship in Theoretical Physics. He then started a second career as a writer, focusing on science education, including authoring ‘Robots!’ with Penguin House Publishing. He changed fields in academia to Computational Neuroscience then Biomimetic Robotics. In 2017, he was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Leadership Award on ‘A Biomimetic Forebrain for Robot Touch’, a major investment in research on the interface of computational neuroscience, AI and robotics. This research has been covered extensively in the media, including the BBC News, the World Service, all major newspapers, Bloomberg, Science and many others. In 2022, he was awarded an Elektra Award for ‘University Research Project of the Year’. He is a co-investigator on the £5M ISCF Made Smarter Innovation Research Centre for ‘Smart, Collaborative Industrial Robotics’ and the £5M Horizon Europe project ‘Advancing the physical intelligence and performance of roBOTs towards human-like bi-manual objects MANipulation’.

Yianni is an expert in bioprocessing and biotechnology, having joined Britvic in 2021 he is currently leading transformative projects in sustainable water strategies and digital transformation. With a background of 15 years in industrial manufacturing, fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, Yianni has made a career of solving complex interdisciplinary problems by bridging knowledge across sectors while applying robust sustainable design principles and coming of age manufacturing technologies. His contributions in science and engineering both in academia and industry have been recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) and the Food and Drink Federation (FDF).