Inside the UK’s Robotics and Automation Scene

Reading time: 5m 50s

Like virtually every first-world country right now, the Brits could also be building robots. The most fascinating thing about this idea is the sheer possibility of one day buying a fully functional humanoid with a thick Scouse accent. 

Imagine spending a small fortune on one of those, only for it to look you dead in the eye and tell you, in that unmistakable Liverpool voice, that you’re being a proper idiot.

If we’re being honest, even that might be a better option than buying the recently viral robot, the one that just straight up looks like Baphomet. 

Jokes aside, the US and China aren’t the only ones making fascinating iron creatures with limbs and intelligence. 

The UK’s robot and automation scene isn’t quiet - it is, in fact, buzzing. 

As natives ourselves, this excites us. We’re happy to explore that scene and bring you all of the exciting stuff in different formats that keep it simple and entertaining. 

Today, we’re kicking things off with a look at some of the most intriguing projects taking shape across the UK’s rapidly evolving robotics sector. 

And as the story unfolds - if they let us through the doors, or we have to get creative and sneak our way in - we’ll be heading into the labs for a more vivid coverage to show you why the future is indeed exciting. 

Humanoid

Humanoid has built a robot known as the HMND 01, running an in-house software brain called KinetIQ. 

The Alpha version stands 220 centimeters tall, hits 7.2 kilometers per hour, and carries a 15-kilogram two-armed payload. 

If you want a UK humanoid to yell at you, this is the company building the body.

The wheeled model already pulled an eight-hour autonomous shift at a Siemens factory in Erlangen, moving 60 totes an hour with pick-and-place success above 90%. Impressive, huh? 

Last month, Humanoid closed a $152 million Series A at a $1.35 billion post-money valuation, taking total money raised to $270 million. 

Founder Artem Sokolov started the thing in London in May 2024 and, per reporting, put roughly $30 million of his own money in at launch. Two years later, it is worth over a billion.

Deals with Schaeffler and Bosch would enable production of 100k units over five years, with beta robots landing at customer sites in the fourth quarter of 2026.

All3

The star of the show in this one is Mantis, a multi-legged robot that looks like something out of a Half-Life level. It carries over 100 kilograms and crosses gravel, slab, scaffolding, and stairs without swapping out parts for each surface.

Around it sits the rest of the stack, which is the actual bet. AI software designs the building for the specific plot, robotic factories fabricate the walls and beams, then mobile robots with interchangeable tools assemble it onsite. 

All3 pulled a $25 million seed in April, led by RTP Global, with the team spread across London, Belgrade, Berlin, and Zug. 

The founders are not first-timers. Rodion Shishkov and Slava Bocharov previously built Samokat and sold it for $1.5 billion.

We are not sure how true this is, but All3 says a fleet of Mantis units can complete a seven-story, 5,000 square meter building in about three months, cutting development time up to 50%, cost up to 30%, and carbon footprint up to 25%.

I’m all for anything that’ll drive housing costs down to £20 per month in highbrow London. 

Dexory

Considering a lot of people in crypto worked in this sector (inventory and stock warehouses) before they made millions off Fartcoin, we believe this is a widely understood product.

Dexory sends a very tall robot down warehouse aisles all night, scanning every pallet position, then feeds it into a digital twin so managers can finally see what is actually on the shelves versus what the system claims.

It raised a $165 million Series C to scale DexoryView, with customers including GXO, Maersk, DHL, Stellantis, and GE Appliances, plus a North American HQ in Nashville. Then it added £8.5 million from the British Business Bank in March 2026. 

The company has been at this longer than most people realize. It started as BotsAndUs in 2015 and rebranded in 2022 after pivoting to warehouse inventory intelligence. 

The next-generation robot shown at Manifest 2026 pushed scanning range from roughly 40 feet to 60 feet, which sounds boring until you realize it unlocks double-deep racks and floor storage that drones and fixed cameras cannot handle.

Slamcore

Everyone in robotics wants to sell software to robot makers. The problem is, there are not that many robot makers.

So, Slamcore turned around and went after the millions of forklifts already being driven by humans. 

Its visual AI uses a stereo camera to track where a vehicle is and how it is behaving inside a factory or warehouse, with no extra infrastructure. 

The products, Slamcore Aware and Slamcore Alert, are live in over 30 facilities across Europe and North America.

At first, you feel bad for all the forklift drivers out there. Next, you think about the safety math, and things begin to make sense - between 35k and 62k forklift injuries happen annually in the US, averaging two deaths a week.

In May 2026, it raised $14 million led by ROKStar Ventures, Rockwell Automation's arm, bringing total funding to $40 million alongside Toyota Ventures, Interwoven Ventures, MMC Ventures, Amadeus Capital Partners, and IP Group.

Talking about what the long game here is, Slamcore has said the data coming off these deployments could train future physical AI and robotics systems.

Stateful

According to Nick Hawes, stateless systems treat every decision in isolation and cannot remember previous incidents or how work actually flows through a site. 

What this means is that robots act like goldfish. They are brilliant at reading the room, but often hopeless at remembering it.

For this reason, Nick and his team built Stateful, a persistent, shared model of tasks, environments, and past behavior that allows robots to handle a blocked aisle, an unexpected delivery, bad lighting, or a safety incident and still finish the job. 

Stateful raised $4.8 million in a pre-seed led by Amadeus Capital Partners and Oxford Science Enterprises on March 24, 2026, with angel money from Five founder Stan Boland.

Apian

Anything that improves the NHS is an instant favorite, and the final project we are covering today is no exception. 

It’s called Apian, and was founded by NHS doctors as a health-tech, medical supply, and assistance delivery orchestrator company. 

Apian does not build drones. Rather, it focuses on building the network for effective additional healthcare assistance through tech such as delivery bots, automated drones, made by the best-fitting providers. 

The project has already completed thousands of sample deliveries across London, helping clinicians move faster on emergency heart attack cases and urgent pediatric diagnoses.

With Wing, it runs the South West London Pathology and St. George's service, live since February 2026, with Civil Aviation Authority approval through February 2027. 

With Matternet, it started trial flights at Great Ormond Street Hospital in July 2026 under an initial six-month approval. 

The service is expected to cut delivery times by up to 85%, and journeys that took 40 minutes on London roads are expected to become five-minute flights. 

Autonomous ground robots are also being scoped alongside the drones at Great Ormond Street. Air and pavement, same network. 

Thoughts 

I’ll keep it real. Robots are cool. We’ve come a long way from owning the Toy Story bot to actually building humanoids that might be able to reason like us hoomans someday. How cool is that? 

While we await the first-ever robot prime minister - which is not impossible, considering the number of people who've lived in No. 10 in recent times - our eyes are fixed on the advancements in the robotics sector across the country. 

We believe that robots and automation have the potential to create a much better future for the UK - solving things like housing deficit, healthcare, infrastructure, and so much more, from both a consumer perspective and an industrial integration standpoint. 

Ladies and gentlemen, there are more where this came from, and so we’re happy to revisit the scene in the near future - stay tuned for visual reviews and all that cool stuff.