Manchester Met opens robotics lab to fashion businesses seeking local manufacturing

Manchester Met’s Manchester Fashion Institute (MFI) has opened its doors to its Robotics Living Lab (RoLL), a manufacturing lab where fashion businesses and researchers can access modernised and sustainable production methods.

Here, it will be possible to utilise the site’s collaborative robotic technology, also known as ‘cobots’, which MFI said are “programmed to create sustainable high value, low volume garments”.

According to the institute, the cobots have the ability to stitch, draw, knit and 3D scan a mannequin or human body to then prototype a garment design.

The lab has been funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council, and intends to support the fashion industry in its contribution to the UK government’s new industrial strategy, involving creative industries and clean energy targets.

It further aims to bring garment manufacturing back to the UK by supporting small to medium designers in implementing sustainable methods to their business.

While RoLL said it was currently seeking industry partners for research purposes, it confirmed it was in discussions with “several high value, sustainable fashion brands” interested in collaboration.

In a release, Susan Postlethwaite, professor of Fashion Technologies at MFI and director of RoLL, said the launch was a “culmination of years of planning, collaboration and research”.

She added: “The fashion industry makes a huge contribution to the UK economy, however most of that comes from imported garments. RoLL will play a vital role in attracting the workforce back to the UK, upskilling human workers and offering world-class fashion design products that are locally manufactured.

“I believe that fashion must be taken more seriously when it comes to planning for our manufacturing future and should be included in a new industrial strategy. By using innovative and sustainable technologies here in Manchester, RoLL will help to reshape the agenda for the creative industry.”