European digital innovation hub strengthens robotics development

Digital innovation hubs are vital to create innovative solutions and employment. ROBOTT-NET is an example of a digital innovation hub, where four leading Research Technology Organizations (RTOs) in Europe aim to strengthen robotics development and the competitiveness of European Manufacturing.

The main objective of ROBOTT-NET is to create a sustainable European infrastructure to support novel robotic technologies on their path to market.

ROBOTT-NET includes Danish Technological Institute (DTI,DK), Fraunhofer IPA (DE), Tecnalia (ES) and The Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC,UK).

The initiative combines European competencies in state-of-the art applied robotics and enables companies to benefit from Danish, German, Spanish and British expertise, says project coordinator Kurt Nielsen of DTI’s Centre for Robot Technology.

By offering highly qualified consulting services, ROBOTT-NET contributes to an easy access to specialist expertise and helps companies of all sizes bring their ideas to the market and optimize the production.

During the project ROBOTT-NET has arranged Open Labs in Denmark, Germany, England and Spain, where companies can learn about robotics opportunities.

Any European company that wanted to use or produce robots has been invited to apply for a voucher, which is the backbone of the program. Big manufacturers, garage start-ups and everything in between were eligible as long as the idea was concrete enough.

64 projects were selected and received a voucher. The voucher entitled the companies to approximately 400 hours of free consulting with robotics experts from all over Europe at the four partner locations.

Amongst these 64 projects ROBOTT-NET has assisted Orifarm in developing vision system for identifying new medicin boxes, helped AirLiquide in developing an autonomous mobile robot for handling of high pressure containers and supported Trumpf in developing a robot gripper that can perform unstructured bin picking of large metal sheets.

Additionally, eight projects will be selected for a ROBOTT-NET pilot, that will help the companies develop their voucher work through proof of concept level and accelerate it towards commerciality.

Check out the voucher page on ROBOTT-NET.eu and get inspired by the work that already has been done between European Companies and Research Technology Organizations.

Thilo Zimmermann

Thilo Zimmermann