UK organisations now have the opportunity to get innovation grants to develop disruptive solutions that will reshape future flight technologies and will prepare the UK to face the upcoming aerospace challenges.
The funding, a total of £8 million, will be co-founded and co-managed by Innovate UK, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Aerospace Technology Institute, and will be shared across 3 competitions:
- Collaborative feasibility studies
- Expression of interest for fast-track collaborative research and development projects that could be exploited within 3 to 5 years
- Longer collaborative research and development projects, taking 5 years or more for exploitation
All 3 opportunities will be managed using a portfolio approach and funding will be split according to themes, project duration and costs.
In particular, the competition on collaborative feasibility studies will stay open from 14 January 2019 up until 27 February 2019; UK businesses of any size can apply for share of the funding that will cover 50% of the project costs (expected to cost between £255,000 and £500,000 and last up to 12 months). Applicants should present high risk projects that demonstrate disruptive and high impact innovations to solve the biggest aerospace challenges in the UK, such as:
- Medium-long range aircraft design
- Urban vehicles designed for
- Requirements for a scalable, hybrid electric power demonstrator facility
- High-temperature, superconducting electrical power machines
- Assessing environmental impact of air emissions
- Integration of automation into controlled airspace
Source: Innovate UK
