MacRobert Award 2015: British company Artemis Intelligent Power wins prestigious engineering award for digital hydraulics system
A British company that has developed a way of cutting fuel consumption and transforming offshore wind has won the MacRobert Award, the UK’s most prestigious engineering award.
Scottish firm Artemis Intelligent Power was presented with The Royal Academy of Engineering’s award late last night, for its novel digital hydraulic power system
Three British companies were competing for the award last night. The finalists were Artemis, Endomag and Victrex, coming from very different types of technology: digital hydraulics, cancer diagnostics and ultra-thin polymers.
The great differences between the finalists proves that this is an “exciting” time for engineering in the UK, chair of the judging panel Dame Sue Ion told CityAM:
The breadth of the finalists shows what amazing innovations we’re seeing in the UK’s engineering.
Artemis’ digital hydraulic power system has a range of potential applications. It can be be used to improve braking technology on buses, thereby cutting fuel consumption, but the technology can also replace mechanical gearboxes in wind turbines. By dramatically increasing the increasing turbines’ capacity and making them more reliable, it has the potential to make wind power a more cost-effective solution.
This is not simply evolutionary improvement but a complete step change, and one that took years of commitment to achieve.
The winners were awarded £50,000 in prize money.