NEWS 10 HYDRAULICS & PNEUMATICS July/August 2026 www.hpmag.co.uk industry partners each year. University teams are challenged to design, build, test and compete with a single-seat race car while also demonstrating business, manufacturing and project-management skills. The competition is intended to bridge academic learning and real-world engineering practice. RS launched its 2026 Formula Student funding earlier in the year, inviting fund applications from teams globally for £1000 worth of RS products. RS received 137 applications from 33 countries, and 50 teams were selected to each receive the £1000 product fund. Almost half of these were from the UK and Ireland. The RS Formula Student funding programme forms part of RS’s wider Engineers of Tomorrow initiative, which is dedicated to inspiring and supporting the next generation of engineers. Through funding, technical resources, industry expertise and hands-on learning opportunities, the programme helps students develop the practical skills and experience needed to succeed in engineering careers. Jen Scarlett, head of social impact at RS, said: “Supporting students in this prestigious and established competition is closely aligned with our commitment to championing tomorrow’s engineers, by helping teams develop practical engineering skills and bring their designs to life. We’re delighted that UK teams awarded funding from the RS Engineers of Tomorrow programme have achieved this great success.” Since launching the programme in 2021, RS has supported 54 different Formula Student teams across the UK and Ireland, providing 125 individual funding awards. Alongside the £1000 product fund, teams can access RS’s technical resources and engineering support network, gaining assistance with product selection, sourcing, compliance, troubleshooting, configuration guidance and prototype development support. Teams can also access technical data sheets, DesignSpark content, and product expertise to help identify the most suitable components and equipment for their vehicle development. Teams were evaluated by industry experts and engineering professionals, with criteria including engineering design, cost and manufacturing and business plan presentation. In the dynamic events, elements like acceleration, skid pad, sprint, endurance and efficiency were judging criteria, and the AI teams were additionally judged on autonomous systems capability and real-world performance. Of the products chosen by teams that had won £1000 from the RS Formula Student funding, those competing in the ‘Autonomous’ race category opted for single board computers (SBCs), to support high-performance computational requirements like computer vision for object detection, and path planning/decision-making systems. Common platforms included the NVIDIA Jetson series and Raspberry Pi. Most teams continued to rely on microcontrollers, largely due to their capability to handle real-time and safety-critical function – key considerations in Formula Student vehicle design. AMRC sets up £1m capability to de-risk hydrogen fuel switching for manufacturers The University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) has secured £1m funding to establish HyDecarb, a first-of-its-kind, open-access research capability dedicated to the decarbonisation ofindustrial natural gas. Industrial heat is one of the most significant challenges in the race to net zero, accounting for nearly onefifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. In the UK, industrial processes contribute approximately 12% of total emissions, the majority of which is heatrelated. While many sectors can turn to electrification, energy-intensive industries such as foundries, glassmaking and steel face massive technical barriers where electricity is not yet a viable option. The HyDecarb project, backed by the High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult, provides a real-world, industrialscale testbed for manufacturers to trial hydrogen fuel-switching in a controlled environment. Designed to bridge the gap between laboratory research and full-scale industrial adoption, the AMRC’s openaccess infrastructure removes the technical and financial barriers that have traditionally made the transition to lowcarbon energy too risky for individual manufacturers to attempt alone. Matthew Cawood, head of castings at the AMRC, says the capability is a necessity for the survival of these sectors. He said: “High-temperature industries have traditionally been the hardest to decarbonise, but finding a solution is now a necessity. By developing this capability at the AMRC, we are proving to our partners that they can slash emissions immediately without needing to reinvent their entire operation. “We are providing the environment where businesses can meet environmental goals while keeping their production lines running and staying competitive. As a leading manufacturing R&D centre, our role is to de-risk this technology and drive its adoption across the UK manufacturing sector to meet the
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