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manual labour, thereby helping manufacturers increase their productivity and competitiveness. These advances will take the form of three prototype operations that will come on stream as the project progresses.

To go into these objectives in more detail, the companies believe they can come up with new strategies and devices for handling “non-rigid parts” so that robots can grab, handle and package shoes without damaging the materials. They also believe sensor-based robot programming and controlling tools will be able to link to computer-aided design systems to make it easier for shoe manufacturers to use the robotic technology in a variety of operations. Another Robofoot aim is to redesign some production processes to allow “robot-assisted manufacturing and assembly”, with heating the materials at specific points in the chain, visual inspection and packaging among the activities the project team believes robots can perform well.

In total, the consortium has identified a set of six operations in the shoe manufacturing process that are suitable for the introduction of robotics in the short- or medium-term. The hope is that bringing these innovations in gradually, rather than all at once, will help convince the wider footwear industry that the technology works and can help shoe manufacturers improve.