SC Group and the University of Exeter Knowledge Transfer Partnership has been awarded the Business Impact and Transformation award under UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Knowledge Transfer Partnership Awards (KTP).
The partnership spent two years developing an electric drive version of SC Group’s All Terrain Mobility Platform (ATMP), a high mobility off road vehicle, which is used in defence or other hazardous operating environments, including search and rescue and utilities support.
“‘The award was a fantastic way to summarise the work done during and since the KTP to establish a technology within a sector that hadn’t previously been exploited,” said lead design engineer Matt Harvey.
The primary focus of the partnership’s development cycle was to make military and off highway vehicles more capable and environmentally sustainable, a process which SC Group says has transformed their capabilities to create new commercial opportunities. These include the Group’s Supacat business converting its HMT `Jackal` to hybrid electric drive for the British Army, which in turn contributed to a number of high mobility system projects outside of the defense sector.
Innovate UK’s Andy Treen, knowledge transfer advisor for Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, said “This was a first in class, so nobody knew the answers beforehand. What Matt achieved in the end worked incredibly well from both the engineering and the business points of view. This work is helping shape the progress of electrification of defence vehicles in the UK and beyond.”
