Black Founders Programme
The Black Founders Programme is an accelerator targeted at pre-seed or seed stage, Black-founded companies creating innovative products and services...
Made Smarter Technology Accelerator is a unique opportunity for startups to join the largest manufacturing focused UK acceleration programme. A practical, 12 month industry-led programme aimed to develop industry focused prototypes and minimal viable products to some of the UK’s most prevalent manufacturing challenges.
The programme enables the UK’s pioneering technology innovation community to join forces with some of the UK’s leading medium and large industrial businesses to develop solutions to industry-set challenges. It will provide the funding and a platform to produce industry transforming prototypes, proofs of concepts and minimum viable products in order to drive productivity, digitalisation and innovation to push forward the fourth industrial revolution.
Digital Catapult is pleased to announce the seven Industry Challenge owners and their 14 challenges:
- Babcock International Group: Warrior base overhaul and Digital shipbuilding
- BAE Systems: Scalable artificial intelligence for visual inspection and Dynamic workflow management
- GAF: Asphalt material characterisation and Machine vision systems for product conformance and machine condition
- Northumbrian Water: Sewer blockages smart Porcupine and Water network monitoring and real time analysis
- O’Neills Irish International Sports Company Limited: Product customisation – intelligent verification and Automation of production
- Safran Landing Systems: Adaptive scheduling and performance monitoring and Implementation of SPC on all test rigs in the assembly shop
- Sainsbury’s: Microbial control in ready to eat foods and Increasing shelf life and sell through of products while reducing waste
Why get involved
Successful applications will tackle some of the most pressing challenges facing the UK manufacturing industry. Over the course of the programme you will work closely with industry leaders seeking novel services and products addressing:
- Intelligent factory and site management and control
- Intelligent product verification and validation
- Transparent and data driven procurement
- Digital enabled factory and site workforce
- Resource measurement and analytics
The Made Smarter Technology Accelerator has two stages for successful applications. The first stage is a rapid 12 week prototyping exercise with up to £20,000 funding for each team. After a rigorous review, up to three successful teams will be invited to join a five month minimum viable product development stage and receive up to £100,000 of funding.
Who is the programme open to
UK registered startups and scaleups in the process of developing new digital products and services leveraging cutting-edge technologies, and who are interested in working with leading manufacturers.
Technologies relevant to this open call are:
- Future networks and advanced digital infrastructure (5G and the internet of things including; low powered wide area networks, NB-IoT, LIFI etc. including sensors, edge devices, wearables etc.)
- Immersive technologies – Extended reality (virtual, augmented, mixed reality and haptics)
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning (natural language processing, machine vision, deep learning)
- Distributed ledger technologies (Blockchain etc.)
We encourage teams from multiple companies to apply but the lead company must be UK established and register with their UK bank account.
A little more info
The main focus for applicants should be on creating ideas and developing an approach for how you would solve the challenges, and demonstrate your experience and capability in solving the challenges.
For full information and to apply please visit our programme website madesmartertech.uk