A ROBOTICS company which specialises in insulating social housing has been named best start-up at the Invention and Entrepreneurship in Robotics Awards in Seattle.

Q-Bot is co-directed by Professor Peter Childs, of Hove, formerly of the University of Sussex, now Imperial College, where he is head of the school of design engineering and the professorial lead in engineering design.

The company provides solutions for under-floor insulation of homes with suspended timber floors. There are more than eight million in the UK alone.

Previously the only way to insulate floors of these homes was to take up the floorboards, which was expensive and disruptive.

Q-Bot’s solution uses a robot inserted through an air vent within the void from outside the property.

The robot then applies insulation to the underside of the floorboards, keeping them warm and dry and allowing the ground to breathe, reducing the risk of damp.

This service reduces cold draughts and uneven temperatures, while saving between £200 and £300 a year in energy bills. The innovation has been trailed trialed by Camden Council, Peabody and CityWest Homes in 2014, with highly positive results.

Founding director Tom Lipinski said: “A UK start-up winning the World Entrepreneurship in Robotics Award might sound odd – we consider Japan as the leader in robotics and US in enterprise.

“Yet very little of the current robotics know-how is being actively applied to real life problems, especially in the US. Yes we are at the forefront of robotic vision, image fusion, localisation and mapping but it is the impact we have that makes this the most rewording job on the planet: helping reduce fuel poverty and improving lives while saving energy and the environment."

“This wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t cost effective but thanks to the cutting edge technology, it is - we have a number of social housing clients who prove it.”