2018: What’s next

The story so far

2018 is already shaping up to be the most exciting and crucial period for DETC so far.

Since we began “trading” two years ago, we at DETC have been lucky enough to help support various fascinating collaborative projects and two PhD cohorts, not to mention over fifty affiliate companies (start-ups up to multi-national) and research organisations we’ve worked with to help them begin adopting new digital technology.

Immersive (VR and AR) and other technologies coming from gaming have been the most recognisable face of this wave of new technology coming through into “serious” engineering - but there is so much more besides this.

What’s next?

In March, in conjunction with the Digital Catapult, we will run our first Pit Stop event to identify new and emerging UK-based start-up technologies for us to take forward into UK’s Automotive Engineering sector. The aim of this is to reduce the time it takes our vehicle makers to design and test a new car, motor-bike, tractor or bus.

Our objective is to assist these UK companies cut their circa four-year product development processes time in half, so they can get products to market faster and cheaper than competitors abroad. It will mean that new electric cars can be rolled out sooner and help us all to save the planet through greener driving.

Buckle up

As a publicly-funded body, DETC is uniquely placed to lead this as a pan-sector charge to make the UK more competitive and secure those high-value jobs that we all want to drive to in our new UK-designed, zero-emission, vehicles.

So, watch this space because 2018 will be a very exciting ride!

Jon Horsley

Programme Director

- This blog post was written by Jon Horsley. This blog post is for internal and external use-