Seven hundred robotics engineers are set to be recruited by Dyson over the next five years as it expands its newly revealed robotics division, which already includes 250 robotics experts working across disciplines such as computer vision, machine learning, sensors and mechatronics.
The company says it is half-way through the largest engineering recruitment drive in its history with half of the 2,000 people who have joined it this year being engineers, scientists, and coders.
Dyson plans to create the UK's largest, most advanced, robotics centre at hullavington Airfield in Wiltshire, and to be offering robotic technologies for use in homes by the end of the decade. Another technology it is workin on is "wearables" .
The company is also establishing a new laboratory close to the Dyson Robotics Lab that it has sponsored at Imperial College in London for the past ten years, as well as another one at its global headquarters in Singapore. Over the past six months, Dyson has been refitting one of its main hangars at Hullavington which will be the new home to 250 roboticists. This is the latest stage in a £2.75bn plan to invest in nw technologies, products and facilities, £600m of which will be spent this year.
As part of its expansion drive, Dyson has revealed elements of its robotics vision at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Philadelphia, US.The company has also released a video which gives clues to some of its latest developments, such as robotic hands that can grasp objects.
Until recently, Dyson's main interest in automation systems has been its floor-based vacuum cleaners, the first of which, the DC06, was designed 20 years ago. Dyson's chief engineer, Jake Dyson, who is the son of the company's founder, Sir James Dyson now states, according to PWE's sister magazine Drives & Controls, that robots and wearables are the company's future.
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