Our mission is to develop Robotics and AI solutions to industry-led challenge owners. Since even before the RAIN Hub formed, we have regularly engaged with the nuclear supply chain, operators and challenge owners to really inform our research.
Throughout the first 2.5 years of RAIN we have maintained contact with our supply chain and operator contacts. In fact, much our success is a direct result of the enthusiastic and appropriate support from our industrial community. We have achieved more demonstrations and deployments as a direct result of sustained efforts,both from RAIN and industry, to communicate more and work collaboratively.
We have used a variety of ways to engage with the community. Open days and demonstrations, such as at Manchester in March 2019 and Cumbria in September 2019, are a great opportunity to show some progress we are making and get a wide range of feedback and input. We also regularly coordinate focused sessions with small and specific audiences that allow us to dig deeper into challenges.
In January 2020 we hosted sessions each with UKAEA (United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority) and AWE (Atomic Weapons Establishment) including technical and management experts. The sessions, hosted at Culham Science Centre, allowed us to explore the challenges presented at both sites.
The core values were very similar, aiming to improve quality and frequency of data while keeping humans from harmful environments. The specifics varied, but both sessions allowed RAIN to increase the understanding of how our work can assist in the aims of each organisation with tangible areas of value being identified. We hope to report on further deployments and collaborations with both AWE and UKAEA in future news articles.