The autonomy challenge
How to invest successfully in automation
The automation to autonomy journey
As our case studies, insights and press announcements on this page highlight, Cambridge Consultants is able to explore the furthest boundaries of your ambitions. Our skills and knowledge combine with real-world application experience across multidisciplinary in-house teams. It’s a proven recipe.

Automation to autonomy: navigating the path to success
The need to apply efficiencies to overcome a lack of labour and skills has been constant since the first industrial revolution. But it’s more urgent now than ever. Thankfully, a broad breadth of automation technology is ready to propel change and boost your bottom line.
Our whitepaper explores examples from industries at varying stages of the automation to autonomy journey. We highlight the business benefits to be gained – and reveal the technologies that are crucial to achieving your desired outcome.
Moving from data to insight

Reducing development time and cost
The journey to autonomy via differing levels of automation can also be tracked by the movement from data to insight. At the data stage, a system collects and logs information about its performance but does not have the ability to act on it.
At the second stage – data plus process – a system will collect data and process it into real-time actionable information. It provides a level of understanding from analytics that an operator can act upon.
At the third stage – data and process plus action – a system can act completely autonomously, augmenting human endeavour to enhance efficiency and bring business benefits.
Our collective experience of this journey – enhanced by 60 years of breakthrough innovation across more than a dozen industries – is ready to get you to where you want to be, with reduced development risk, time and cost.

How to accelerate automation and autonomous system development
The shift from data to intelligence is reliant on training data, and the more diverse your use cases, the more data you need, hence where much of the huge expense and time in the system development lies.
CC has been challenging the conventional approach to that data collection, exploring data acquisition performed in digital, simulated environments, potentially reducing cost of that data collection by up to 100 times!
We discussed how and why you could use these techniques in this interview with Business Reporter.
We’re delivering technology breakthroughs that transform markets

Carbon sequestration in action
How is carbon sequestration measured and why is soil health important to us all? This case study reveals breakthroughs in soil measurement and validation.
- Strategic advice
- Sustainability

ESC Home Energy Management System
Energy service innovation for a low-carbon economy
- AI & Data Analytics consultancy
- Audio & Video
- Digital service innovation
- User Experience (UX)

The future of AI is at the edge
Driven by advances in silicon and machine learning algorithms, Edge AI is presenting vast opportunities for businesses across diverse markets.
- AI & Data Analytics consultancy
- Audio & Video
- Connectivity & IoT
- Electronics & ASICs
- Signal processing

VeriTherm smart thermal measurement
Digital services innovation to transform building performance
- Digital service innovation
- Sensing
- User Experience (UX)
Intelligent automation

Improving efficiencies for your customers
Intelligent automation is rich in promise, especially when it comes to transforming efficiency. To that end, we identify and deploy the most pertinent technologies in smart connectivity and mechatronics. But beyond that, our ambition is to redefine the art of the possible by creating and developing solutions that are more than the sum of their parts – because they are tailored for you from first principles.
How can intelligent simulation speed up development time?
Simulation is only as good as its approximation to the real world... its 'equivalence' in technical terms.
We've been looking at how using intelligent simulation with a modular framework can deliver results faster to drive autonomous system development forward.
Due to the complexity of simulation and the range of areas it can be used in development, we have created a dedicated website outlining the approach and examples of use. Either watch the video which describes the content of the page, or take a look for yourself.

Synthetic data and simulation for real-world business advantage
Now, more than ever, companies need to think about innovative ways to survive and prosper. Those investing in synthetic data and simulated environments gain access to data that is prohibitively expensive to generate through real-world creation, may be dangerous to access or simply not even exist, and they will be rewarded with drastically cheaper, faster and less risky route to market.
In this whitepaper, we explore the compelling benefits of employing simulated environments. Drawing on our experience across a range of industry sectors, and exploring pertinent case studies of simulation in action, the report highlights the advantages of an agile new approach to innovation
Autonomous mobile robots navigating dynamic environments
The world is about to experience significant progress in AI-enabled autonomous mobile systems. It will open opportunities for such systems to be used in a diverse range of markets. From consumer and hospitality through to construction, hospitals and care homes, nothing will be the same again.
With mobile robots set to transcend simple material handling and transport uses into much more challenging environments, we decided to invest time to confront key remaining challenges. High on that list is navigation.

Smart vision for farming – breaking AI out of the datacentre
As pressures increase on the food supply chain, the importance of predictable yields increases. Generally, the better informed growers are, the better the price they can potentially obtain. However, manual counts struggle...
- AI & Data Analytics consultancy

Hitachi Vision Design
Future visions of a global society transformed
- Digital service innovation
- Innovation management
- User Experience (UX)

Purina Petivity
How AI-powered connected products are enabling Purina to grow its business for good
- AI & Data Analytics consultancy
- Product realisation
- Sensing

Artificial intelligence moves beyond human vision
Announcing SharpWave™, a ground-breaking AI technology that creates clear views of the real-world from a damaged or obscured moving image. SharpWave could transform numerous applications, from autonomous driving to medical imaging.
- AI & Data Analytics consultancy
Ground-breaking autonomy

Valuable opportunity sits on the horizon for the autonomous electricity grid
With the increasing operational instability and cost of the electricity grid, autonomy may become a necessary solution.
In this article, we explore the opportunities and technical challenges associated with an autonomous grid and talk through a range of key challenges and approaches necessary to make it a success.

Delivering differentiation with world firsts
Autonomy isn’t about replacing humans; it’s about making the move from insight to process and action – to augment your business and take it to the next level. Often that means creating world firsts by achieving levels of performance unmatched by competitors.
We’ve helped to nail game-changing autonomy with the world’s most dense communications network, enabling swarms of robots to collaborate. And we’ve pushed back the boundaries of low-power performance in smart connected wearables to bring intelligent automation to the masses.
Autonomy is more than software and sensors. It’s physics and maths, electronics and user design, digital signal processing and embedded AI. We’ll bring these skills together with our world-class facilities to deliver differentiation that you alone will own.
Is highly equivalent simulation the answer?
Simulation is only as good as its approximation to the real world… its ‘equivalence’ in technical terms.
We’ve been looking at how using intelligent simulation with a modular framework can deliver results faster to drive autonomous system development forward.

Under the hood of AI-enhanced vehicle perception
Behind the scenes of the development of the EnfuseNet system, which fuses data from extremely low-cost sensors and cameras to generate high-resolution depth data – the ideal reference point for autonomous systems.
- AI & Data Analytics consultancy
- Sensing

Wireless breakthrough for the Ocado Smart Platform
A world-first in radio design helps transform online grocery across the globe
- Cloud/scalable systems
- Connectivity & IoT
- Digital security
- Electronics & ASICs
- Embedded software
- Mechanical engineering
- Product realisation
- Radio systems
- Robotics
- Signal processing
- Strategic advice

Mamut: The autonomous robot in the field of agritech
Mamut explores crop fields, capturing granular data on health and yield on a massive scale. By automating data capture, Mamut will bring new efficiencies to food production, enabling growers to predict and optimize yields.
- AI & Data Analytics consultancy
- Connectivity & IoT
- Mechanical engineering
- Robotics
- Sensing
- Tracking & location

Helping visually impaired people to navigate indoor spaces
Cambridge Consultants and Waymap have created a unique smartphone service that helps visually impaired people to navigate through complex indoor spaces, such as public transport hubs.
- AI & Data Analytics consultancy
- Digital service innovation
- Sensing
- Tracking & location

Niall Mottram

Kieran Reynolds

Will Addison

Sajith Wimalaratne

Chris Roberts

Oli Qirko

Tim Ensor

Tarika George