We’re sitting in a conference room in the recently inaugurated Digital Innovation Facility (DIF), a £12.7m centre of excellence for emerging engineering technologies. Headed by Dr Andy Levers, DIF is a purpose-built environment to support collaborations and partnerships between academia and industry in the areas of computer and data science, robotics and engineering. Levers’ full title is executive director of the Institute of Digital Engineering and Autonomous Systems (IDEAS), which sits above DIF and the Virtual Engineering Centre in the organisational food chain. He says that DIF was set up to bring together a multi-disciplinary team of engineers, scientists and technologists who will use their expertise to “maximise the possibilities and impact of these emerging technologies”.

Based at the University of Liverpool, DIF’s facilities include a mixed-reality laboratory kitted out with the latest VR technology, an extreme environment lab that simulates...