OPINION: A helping hand for the innovators in robotics – Rowanne Miller

Rowanne Miller, Project Manager at The National Robotarium and lead of the Robotics Adoption Fund

Originally published in The Herald Business HQ supplement on 6 November 2025

Scotland is attempting something ambitious: building genuine connective tissue between world-class robotics research and everyday business transformation. After years of investment in research infrastructure and academic excellence, we’re now testing whether we can become equally good at helping businesses adopt these technologies confidently and strategically.

The early signs suggest we’re onto something.

Recent months have demonstrated Scotland’s growing position as a hub for robotics innovation. The inaugural UK Robotics Expo drew capacity crowds. Edinburgh welcomed hundreds of international robotics specialists for ROSCon UK 2025. And, the Deep Tech Growth Programme launched – bringing together advanced manufacturing capabilities, research institutes, and technology organisations under one coordinated programme.

But the more interesting story isn’t about what happened at these events; it’s about what happens next in facilities and offices across the nation.

From innovation to implementation

Scotland has proven it can innovate in robotics. We’ve built research facilities and created partnerships between academia and industry that generate genuine technological breakthroughs. The frontier now is different.

Can we help Scottish businesses become confident adopters of robotics at the same pace we’ve developed research capability? Can we translate academic excellence into economic transformation across sectors that haven’t traditionally thought of themselves as technology leaders?

This is the challenge our new Robotics Adoption Fund aims to address. A Scottish Government initiative to accelerate robotics and AI adoption across Scotland’s businesses and public sector, it represents a fundamentally different approach to innovation support.

Understanding the adoption journey

When we engage with businesses across Scotland’s key sectors we hear something consistent and encouraging. Business leaders understand that robotics represents opportunity. They’re not asking whether robotics matters; they’re asking more sophisticated questions about how it applies to their specific context.

A whisky distiller wants to understand whether robotic systems make sense for their production volume and facility layout. An agricultural operation needs to assess how automation fits within infrastructure constraints. A textile manufacturer is thinking about workforce implications – how roles evolve, what training is required, how to bring teams along as partners in transformation.

These are the right questions. They reflect operational maturity and strategic thinking. But answering them requires more than access to information – it requires applied expertise, sector-specific knowledge, and willingness to work through complexity in partnership.

A new model of support

The Robotics Adoption Fund provides a structured pathway through this complexity. It’s a six-month pilot programme designed to test whether expert-led, stage-appropriate support genuinely accelerates adoption.

The programme mirrors how businesses approach transformation with elements like The National Robotarium’s Robotics Readiness Reviews which offer organisations an honest assessment of their current position through sector-specific workshops. For businesses ready to explore further, ‘adoption assistance’ brings engineering expertise directly into operations – including site visits to understand facilities and workflows firsthand, and detailed recommendations tailored to specific constraints and opportunities.

The ‘implementation’ stage then supports organisations ready to prove concepts – working in partnership to co-design, build, and test proof-of-concept solutions. With 70% of costs covered by the fund, businesses can validate approaches before committing to full-scale adoption, significantly reducing the risk inherent in innovation. The programme aims to support at least 13 companies through these stages during the pilot, providing the evidence base for what effective adoption support looks like in practice.

Building an ecosystem

But the fund doesn’t exist in isolation – it’s part of broader momentum that has seen the Scottish Government recently commit millions for increased innovation and economic growth in technologies of significant economic value, including robotics.

The Deep Tech Growth Programme brings together manufacturing capabilities and expertise to support companies from concept through to production. A partnership between The National Robotarium, Scottish Enterprise and the National Manufacturing Institute of Scotland (NMIS), the six-month pilot aims to harness and strengthen Scotland’s deep tech capabilities and provide a one-stop-shop to help emerging tech companies access tailored support, manufacturing expertise, strategic partners and growth investment.

And the Scottish Government’s Robotics and Autonomous Systems Cluster programme, which is also supported by Scottish Enterprise and led by The National Robotarium in collaboration with NMIS, will map Scotland’s robotics ecosystem, identifying where capabilities exist and where strategic investment can strengthen collaboration.

What makes this particularly significant is timing. Scotland’s pilot programmes will provide practical evidence about what works – what kinds of support genuinely move businesses from consideration to confident adoption, and what galvanises companies already in the robotics space to anchor and scale in Scotland. If successful, these models could influence how future investment in robotics is deployed nationally.

Writing the playbook

Scotland isn’t alone in recognising robotics as an economic opportunity. The difference will be in translating that recognition into widespread business adoption at scale.

As a nation, we also have an opportunity to demonstrate that adoption isn’t simply about funding or strategy documents – it’s about building practical partnerships between expertise and operations, recognising that transformation is often messy and iterative, and providing support that meets businesses where they are rather than where we wish they were.

The Robotics Adoption Fund represents Scotland’s willingness to experiment with this approach, to learn from what works and adjust what doesn’t, and to build evidence that can inform not just Scotland’s future investment but potentially how the wider UK approaches robotics adoption.

The opportunity ahead

For Scottish businesses, a genuine opportunity exists to access expertise and support at a time when adopting robotics thoughtfully could determine competitive positioning for decades. It’s a chance to demonstrate that we’re not just capable of generating innovation, but equally skilled at helping businesses transform that innovation into economic value.

Those that engage with the fund will do more than benefit individually. They’ll help Scotland understand what effective adoption support looks like, contributing to a model that could shape how innovation translates to business reality across the UK.

Scotland’s robotics research excellence is established. The infrastructure is built. The expertise exists. What we’re testing now is whether we can be equally excellent at helping businesses navigate the path from awareness to implementation.