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INESC TEC joins SME Robotics initiative
INESC TEC’s Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CROB) is officially part of the SME Robotics Consortium, a European robotics initiative whose goal is to strengthen the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the area of manufacturing using cognitive robotics. Manufacturing is a key sector in the European Union.
INESC TEC joined this project in April 2015, together with nine other partners within the European Union. The main goal of the SME Robotics is to create robots suited to the needs of small and medium enterprises that will assist manufacturing by promoting interaction between humans and robots.
The idea is to
improve the productivity of the companies’ shop floor.
As part of this project, INESC TEC is coordinating the demonstrator CLARiSSA –
Cooperative DuaL-Arm Robot for Structural Steel fAbrication, where the goal is
to develop a dual arm robotic manipulator
for welding metal structures. This demonstrator will also be developed by two
other Portuguese companies, SARKKIS Robotics and NORFERSteel. According to Germano Veiga, this demonstrator is an excellent opportunity
to integrate new industrial robotics paradigms in Portugal, such as
human-machine interaction, and the use of cognitive robotics to respond to the
challenges of SMEs.
The INESC TEC
researchers mentioned in this article are associated with the following partner
institutions: INESC Porto.
Photo credits: www.facebook.com/SMEroboticsEU
INESC TEC, April 2015