What do you think are the biggest blockers to the widespread adoption of robots in the UK?

Depends what you are thinking of with regards to robots. Obviously we have some sectors with extensive use of robotic industrial arms and similar automation (electronics, car manufacture etc), and think the UK does well on logistics automation.

I would say automation quantity is quite poor in the UK; and this is mostly centred around the supply chain. Bigger firms are often well equipt. Lots of small businesses that feed into larger ones, with people working away in metal sheds on cheap land hidden along the edges of many UK towns, are not so good and rely on manual work. The issue for them, in my experience, is capital.

Automation might have great benefits for them, but it's a risk if you need to borrow a lot at a high interest rate, often with the hope you can find the customers for this increased output ASAP once it is up and running. Typically they turn over very modest proifts, and that investment has to go on staff, facilities, meeting regulation etc. The biggest driver I have seen for SMEs to take the risk and adopt automation is typically a loss of access to semi-skilled staff as the existing workforces retires and new hires are hard to come by.

There are other issue (skills issues around long term running and mainteance, scale issues for UK based integrators, the cost of power etc.) that are also factors that could do with some work.

If you mean the fancier Tesla style human robots (which is what a lot of that strong academic base spends time on), they just aren't that practical in the real world. We should keep adaemic work going, but it would be churlish to put too much taxpayer investment in them too early, when so much of our industry could do with automation support or transport link improvements.

Depends what you are thinking of with regards to robots. Obviously we have some sectors with extensive use of robotic industrial arms and similar automation (electronics, car manufacture etc), and think the UK does well on logistics automation.

I would say automation quantity is quite poor in the UK; and this is mostly centred around the supply chain. Bigger firms are often well equipt. Lots of small businesses that feed into larger ones, with people working away in metal sheds on cheap land hidden along the edges of many UK towns, are not so good and rely on manual work. The issue for them, in my experience, is capital.

Automation might have great benefits for them, but it's a risk if you need to borrow a lot at a high interest rate, often with the hope you can find the customers for this increased output ASAP once it is up and running. Typically they turn over very modest proifts, and that investment has to go on staff, facilities, meeting regulation etc. The biggest driver I have seen for SMEs to take the risk and adopt automation is typically a loss of access to semi-skilled staff as the existing workforces retires and new hires are hard to come by.

There are other issue (skills issues around long term running and mainteance, scale issues for UK based integrators, the cost of power etc.) that are also factors that could do with some work.

If you mean the fancier Tesla style human robots (which is what a lot of that strong academic base spends time on), they just aren't that practical in the real world. We should keep adaemic work going, but it would be churlish to put too much taxpayer investment in them too early, when so much of our industry could do with automation support or transport link improvements.