Q-BOT Mark 4

One of the most pressing challenges when addressing Climate Change is energy use of buildings. Since most of homes that will be with us by 2050 have already been built,
retrofitting them with energy efficiency measures is essential. In order to address this
challenge the Government has introduced two flagship retrofitting programs – The Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation (ECO). ECO, which is to take over from CERT by January 2013, is specifically designed to improve hard to treat properties (build before 1919, mostly Victorian) with measures such as Solid Wall Insulation (SWI) and the treatment of hard to treat cavities.
Recent studies demonstrated that un-insulated timber floors contribute to between 10% and 25% of total heat loss of building (UCL report), totalling over 20,000,000MWh of heat energy per annum. At the same time, due to current, impractical implementation effective under-floor insulation of existing buildings is one of the greatest challenges to nation-wide up-scaling of retrofit activity aimed at improving energy performance of our current building stock. While cavity or external wall insulation, loft insulation and new windows are already available and relatively uncomplicated solutions, under-floor insulation is the next intervention to include. However, it is currently disruptive, labour intensive and costs up to £10,000 per installation while being technically incomplete.
The cost, complexity and duration of energy efficiency measures designed for ‘hard to treat’ properties will form the main obstacle to the efficient and large scale roll-out of retrofitting.
Most of this comes down to labour intensity of current approaches. Q-Bot has developed the technology that overcomes this and has already demonstrated the robotic delivery of underfloor insulation in practice. This project is to allow us to take the technology from the Proof of Concept stage to the fully functioning prototype ready for replication and scaling up.