Thoughts on RAICo1

Being a comms person can be a solitary existence - particularly during Covid-19, for obvious reasons.

Yes, we need to speak to people to get the information we need to communicate. Yes, it's better to be in an office together so we can bounce ideas off each other.

But neither of these things are completely necessary to get the job done (as lockdown proved). Face-to-face is best, but now we have Teams. Or phones. Or email. Or messaging. Or texts. Or WhatsApp. The list of ways of asking questions, and getting answers, is getting longer.

Back when I were a lad, there were just two ways of interviewing people. You got in your car and drove to meet them, or you picked up a phone.

I would always rather do the former, and over the years I've had some amazing experiences because of it. This week we had the "soft launch" of our new Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Collaboration hub (RAICo1), and I was determined to go there, despite the 300 mile round trip it necessitated.

So on Tuesday I found myself in Whitehaven, West Cumbria, which is always a pleasure anyway. I started my working day in the office with colleagues, nipped across town to check out RAICo1, and ended the day back in the office. Oh yes, and I also drove up and down the M6, and through the wonderful Lake District, with BBC 6music for company.

It was a long day, but worth it. I have been talking about RAICo1 with my colleagues in our central robotics team for well over a year now. But until this week I hadn't experienced it. Now I have. And it is ALWAYS worth seeing the things you have to explain to others. So here's my personal take on it. But first, as they used to say on shampoo adverts, here's the "science bit"…



RAICo is a collaborative facility that has been set up as a partnership between the University of Manchester, UKAEA, NNL and Sellafield Ltd, allowing researchers from academia to work directly with robotics experts from industry. The facility offers access to mock-ups and robotic equipment to enable researchers to address nuclear decommissioning challenges. Equipment available includes an array of submersible vehicles and underwater manipulators, together with a pond equipped with an underwater and above water Vicon positioning system, where aquatic-based systems can be tested. In addition, there is a wide range of sensors available including thermal cameras, radiation detectors and simulated radiation sources and detectors that are ideal for testing robot autonomy in radiation environments.



All very exciting, yes? But what exactly is it?

Well for a start for a landlocked Cheshire lad like me, the building is in a spectacular spot on a headland above Whitehaven itself. I'm always a little jealous of my Cumbrian colleagues' proximity to the sea, and RAICo1 is right there. It's not quite in Whitehaven town, but very much on the seafront and just a hop and a skip away from the town's Bus Station business hub. The potential of having such a UK robotics centre of expertise so close to the town cannot be overstated. So I was glad to see that I'd not been overstating it in the copy I've been writing for the past year. Phew.

Inside, the building offers a large space - I'd expected this, but what was gratifying was that it already looks busy. There are cranes in the roof space, a working glovebox, even a large water tank available for testing submersible robots.

I'd hoped this would be in place, and it was great to see it, larger than life and giving the building a real sense of purpose.

What surprised me most was the section at the far end, created out of stacked shipping containers. I entered not expecting to see anything more than some office space. But I was greeted by a large control room with multiple screens, which was being used to showcase how equipment could be controlled on nuclear sites like Sellafield. The visual impact of this can't be overstated, either. We know we need to move our people away from potential harm by bringing in technology. And here it is, the type of control room that will help achieve this - miles away from Sellafield itself, but capable of offering our people a new working experience.

And as the day's purpose came to life, with demonstrations happening across the building's main space, that message was amplified.

RAICo1 is a functional, practical space where the people who own our challenges can come together with the experts who may hold the answers. Its potential is simple to understand, clear to see and huge in potential. That technology - whether it is crowd-pleasing robotics like "Spot the dog" or functional tech like our LongOps programme, can be tested, changed and made ready before moving onto the site, speeding up processes, saving taxpayers' money and making the work we do safer.

For a communicator like me, talking about this stuff is liking shooting fish in a barrel. Or if you prefer, using a remote manipulator arm to activate an AI-enhanced scanning system which can pinpoint and identify a submersible robot in a water-filled silo 100 miles away.

Having now seen it I've confirmed what I thought I knew about the facility. Seeing isn't necessarily believing, but when you're delivering comms it really helps to have experienced what you're writing about.