Launch of the Cyber-Physical Vision

The Cyber-Physical Infrastructure Vision was launched on the 11th February 2022 on the DT Hub. Watch the webinar and read the vision.

Humanity faces pressing planetary scale challenges including the climate emergency, resilience to unexpected shocks, consumption, security, healthcare, food, and many others. The UK punches above its weight but we are competing with other countries with more data, more resources, more money and sometimes political advantages too. So as a nation we need to find new ways to create leverage and defensible competitive advantage.

To respond to these challenges and opportunities, we need to reframe the concept of infrastructure. This is not just buildings, roads, railways and fibre broadband to rural communities, it is also the enabling cyber-physical infrastructure that is often overlooked. Big vertical initiatives and missions lack the time, budget, capabilities and often the vision to build this infrastructure for themselves, let alone to support other initiatives. Companies like Ocado, Rolls-Royce, Arup and Mott MacDonald are successful demonstrators of the transformative power of this cyber-physical infrastructure but they are the exceptions that we now need to make the norm.

So a growing coalition of the willing, led by the Robotics Growth Partnership have been engaging with the government and other stakeholders on a vision for a national Cyber-Physical Infrastructure. Harnessing the power of technologies such as data, Internet of Things, synthetic environments, digital twins, smart machines and living labs, in combination with the tools, infrastructure and recipes that will enable us to work smarter, faster, with less risk and at lower cost.

The vision for this Cyber-Physical Infrastructure was published on 11 February 2022 and is available on the gov.uk website via the following link.