720797Eva – Development of the first low cost, light weight, plug and play tabletop robotic armClosedGRD Development of PrototypeInnovate UKIt has been four decades since industrial robots first began to transform assembly lines in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. Yet despite the advent of automation and advances in robotic, 90% of all manufacturing task that could be automated are still done manually (BCG; 2015 - The Robotics Revolution) The reasons for this are simple: economics and capabilities. Even today it is still less expensive to use manual labour than it is to own, operate, and maintain a robotics system, given the tasks that robots can perform. This leads to lower productivity, lower efficiency and lower wages. We will address this with the development of Eva - a lightweight, low cost, collaborative robotic arm and innovative ‘teach-by-example’ programming software. Made of high- strength plastic and controlled by an easy to use app, Eva will be 400% lighter (3.5kg) than other small robotic arms and 500% cheaper, making is possible to automate lower value manufacturing and lab tasks not currently possible. Our ‘teach by example’ software will make tasking, training and redeployment, simple and done in under 3 hours with no training required. We have proved the concept in the lab with a 3D printed arm however significant design and development work is required to create a pre-production prototype capable of prolonged industrial use. This includes improving the robustness of the polymer skeleton and mechanics, designing a new onboard electronics control system, improving the software, developing new arm attachments and extensive technical validation of the prototype made through soft-tooling prior to mass-production. All current robotic arm solution are metallic, expensive, and heavy and designed for precision industrial use not required for several tasks. As a light weight, low cost solution, Eva has the potential to revolutionise the robotics industry - enabling the automation of menial, labour intensive, low costs tasks – potentially saving £16,653pa in human labour costs per installation.