welcome to IROS2010 website

Time

Speaker /Subject

0930-0940

Introduction

0940 – 1020

(40 minutes)

Mr. Henrik A. Schunk

Research Collaboration against the Backdrop of the Global Economic Challenges

1020 – 1100

(40 minutes)

Dr. Erastos Filos

European Activities in Sustainable Manufacturing

1100 – 1120

Coffee/Tea Break

1120 – 1200

(40 minutes)

Dr. Shinsuke Sakakibara

Expectations for Competitive Automation by Industrial Robot

1200 – 1240

(40 minutes)

Dr. Martin Buehler

Mobile Robots that Make a Difference

1240 – 1400

Lunch

1400 – 1440

(40 minutes)

Mr. Bernd Liepert

Societal challenges and business opportunities for robotics in industry and service

1440 – 1520

(40 minutes)

Dr. Steve Cousins

Open Source Robotics

1520 – 1540

(20 minutes)

Dr. Ming-Ji Wu

Research and Development Policy of Intelligent Robotics in Taiwan

1540 – 1550

Coffee/Tea Break

1550 – 1700

Panel Discussion

Since 10/2008 Responsible for the Business Unit Automation and the cross-divisional departments Sales, Marketing, Continuous Improvement, IT

Latest publication: Keuper, F./Schunk, H. (ed.): Internationalisation of German companies: Strategies, instruments and concepts for medium-sized businesses, August 2009

Memberships: Rotary International, Advisory Board Business + Innovation Steinbeis
Executive Magazine, Advisory Board Electronic Business, Heilbronn University

Although the global economic situation is relaxing, economic circumstances have changed since the beginning of the worldwide crisis at the end of 2008. The robotic industry has to face these new economic challenges.

Until the end of 2008, we were able to rely on a continuous and predictable economic boom. The predictability of financial growth enabled the flexible deployment of resources, perfectly adapted to the actual situation. In consequence there was a comfortable financial scope for performing risky projects which enabled fundamental innovations - leading to high chances for diversification. Furthermore, risky well funded projects often produce 'surplus' results that spawn further innovation. The result is a self-perpetuating innovation loop.

Since the end of 2008, the predictability of the economic situation has been limited dramatically and resources have to be strictly scheduled. In consequence, there is less financial scope for risky projects, leading to smaller (but more secure) steps of innovation. At first sight, this leads into reduced chances of diversification, decreasing number of following innovations and the break of the innovation loop. Thus, if we are only able to do small steps currently, we need to do them faster if we don’t want to break the innovation loop.

Thus more than ever on the backdrop of the global economic challenges, the robotics industry needs the support of both,

· research collaboration with the academic community to produce innovative technologies and market focused developments and

In the current situation, there is a high quality of work within research collaborations with highly qualified and motivated research institutions. This is a perfect base for market focused research and developments. However, there are some important issues to be improved to face the new economic situation:

· Cooperate on a worldwide basis for standardization, legal-, ethical- & societal Issues

The talk will give a more detailed view into possible strategies in light of the new economic situation, showing some best practice examples to explain the innovation loop. And it will give some recommendations how to realize and strengthen market focused R&D and what topics could be important.

Within the European Commission's Information Society and Media Directorate-General, Dr Filos is responsible for the coordination of activities related to ICT and manufacturing and manages the European Secretariat of the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) initiative, a global international collaborative R&D programme involving industrially led R&D consortia from Japan, Korea, the United States, Switzerland and the European Union (including Norway).

He was born in Athens, Greece. After obtaining his MSc in Physics from Hamburg University, Germany, he worked as Researcher at the High-Energy Physics Lab (DESY) in Hamburg. He holds a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Konstanz University, Germany. After eight years of university research he started his industry career as Project Manager at Perkin Elmer Corporation and then as Leader of the Electronics Design team at Bosch Telecom in Heidelberg, Germany.

After 15 years of activity in university and industry he joined the European Commission's research programme ESPRIT (European Strategic Programme in Information Technologies) in 1993 as Scientific Officer, in the domain "Computer-integrated Manufacturing and Engineering". The portfolio of projects under his supervision addressed issues such as robotics, concurrent engineering and product and process data modelling. In the successor programme IST (Information Society Technologies), Dr. Filos became responsible for R&D strategy in the Programme's domains "New Methods of Work and Electronic Commerce" and "Components and Systems".

Manufacturing is still the driving force in Europe's economy. It stretches across more than 25 industrial sectors, largely dominated by SMEs, and generates annually € 1,535 billion (42 %) of value added. The long-term shift from a cost-based competitive advantage to one based on high added value and sustainability requires a shift in thinking.

At the beginning of the financial and economic crisis an Economic Recovery Plan was proposed by the European Commission which includes measures for research and innovation, facilitated through public-private partnerships in areas such as "Factories of the Future", "Energy-Efficient Buildings" and "Green Cars". There is a clear shift towards "green" technologies associated with these partnerships. The Factories of the Future initiative in particular, aims at improving manufacturing enterprises' technological capability of adapting to environmental pressures and of adequately responding to increasing global consumer demand for greener, more customised high-quality products. It is expected that these accelerated research and innovation efforts will lead to a more demand-driven industry with less waste and lower energy consumption. Whilst European Factories of the Future activities in 2009 included a package of € 95 million of public R&D investment that was matched by another € 50 million in private investment, the amount available in 2010 is € 160 million. The activities cover areas such as:

Robotics and automation have a big share within the "Smart Factories" part of the initiative while other technologies are aiming at supporting "Virtual Factories" and "Digital Factories".

The presentation will provide an overview of robotics-related intelligent manufacturing activities supported by the European research programmes and will also present Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, a multi-lateral global initiative involving industrial and academic collaborative R&D partnerships in the US, Mexico, Korea,

Switzerland

and the EU.

Dr. Shinsuke Sakakibara (born June 16, 1948) graduated in the department of applied physics at the University of Tokyo, Japan in 1972. He joined FANUC LTD in 1972. From 1972 through 1985, he worked on the exploitation of robot control system. He has been at Basic Research Laboratory of FANUC serving as a manager of research and development group of intelligent robot since 1985. He received his doctoral degree in engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1995. He has been serving as General Manager since 2003 and Honorary General Manager since 2004 of Basic Research Laboratory of FANUC. He has been serving as Honorary General manager of Robot Laboratory of FANUC since 1999. He has been serving as Member of the Management since 2007 and Managing Counselor of FANUC since 2009. He was appointed to President of the Robotics Society of Japan in 2009.

Today's manufacturing system is required to realize a production of a variety of products in variable lots in their gradually shortening life cycles. It is also required to realize high quality of products regarding reliability and stability. Recent industrial robots can give appropriate solutions to the above mentioned requests in the manufacturing sector in not only industrialized nations, but also emerging. The latest industrial robots have not only advanced intelligent functions with such sensors as vision and force, but also such super functions as very high speed motion, load capacity exceeding 1 ton, etc. It is very important for the manufacturing sector to utilize such super industrial robots in manufacturing system to survive a global competition.

Dr. Martin Buehler pursued an academic career in robotics (Yale PhD 1990, MIT Post Doc 1990/91, McGill tenured professor 1997) and moved to industry in 2003. He became Director of Robotics at Boston Dynamics, and Chief Engineer for the DARPA Big Dog and other projects. Since 2008 he has been with iRobot, where he is now the Chief Principal Investigator and the Director of Research Competency. He applies his combined industrial-academic background and experience towards leading teams that develop and mature robotics technologies into successful products, to make a difference in people’s lives.

iRobot is at the forefront of robotics applications that make a difference in people’s lives. Building on the success of existing EOD robot systems and applications to save lives, new opportunities arise for throw-able, pack-packable and high payload capable robots in non-EOD markets. We are seeing a transition from largely tele-operated robots to intelligent and autonomous systems, that increasingly take advantage of advances in academia. Due to communications challenges, increased autonomy also opens up new maritime robotics applications: The iRobot® Seaglider™ supported the “BluePoint” Mission Deepwater Horizon Response in the Gulf of Mexico, searching for underwater oil plumes as well as providing data for 3D mapping. New robot applications and technologies are fed by iRobot’s world class robotics research group that does basic to applied research, and provides opportunities for industry-academia collaboration. To inspire today’s students to become the technology leaders of tomorrow iRobot supports STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education initiatives.

Ageing society, security, climate change, sustainable production – societal challenges have been heavily discussed recently. Robotics in general has much to contribute to tackle these challenges. European robotics has united in EUROP, the European Robotics Technology Platform with more than 130 members, to address these societal challenges and to identify business opportunities by developing a strategic research roadmap. As coordinator of this platform and one of the world-leading manufacturers of industrial robots, KUKA is well positioned to embark on new business opportunities despite the economic crisis, not only in the industrial robotics sector, but also in the service robotics sector. This talk will report on the societal challenges identified, how robotics is able to tackle them and how KUKA in particular made progress on its way to become a world leading service robot manufacturer.

2007 — Present ，President and CEO of Willow Garage. Willow Garage is a research institution dedicated to building prototypes of autonomous devices. We are developing an autonomous car, a boat that can sail autonomously around the world, and we are working with Stanford on a Personal Robot Platform.

2003 —2007 Senior Manager , IBM Research (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; IBM; Information Technology and Services industry) Led one of the top Human-Computer Interaction Research groups in the world at the Almaden Research Center. Developed connections to product groups within IBM, and was the liaison to the Consumer Products Industry team in IBM for all of IBM Research.

1993 — 1996 Research Associate, Interval Research (Information Technology and Services industry) Worked on clustering and a multi-media browser (early DVR prototype) part time during my PhD program.

1988 —1992 Researcher, Medical Informatics Laboratory, Washington University School of Medicine (Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Computer Software industry)

Over the next 10 years, personal robots (as opposed to industrial robots) have the potential to improve people's lives by taking automation to a new level. Like personal computers of 30 years ago, the personal robotics industry will take off and become an economic engine. But robotics is a complex, multidisciplinary field, and fielding successful applications requires expertise ranging from hardware (mechanical and electrical) to social science. By working together on an open source software platform, we can accelerate progress in the field and more quickly field successful applications. Willow Garage has partnered with Stanford University and many other top robotics laboratories around the world to create such an open source code base. The robot operating system, ROS, is quickly becoming the de facto platform for robotics research. I will argue that most if not all robotics companies should join the ROS bandwagon, as a way to move the entire industry forward quickly.

Dr. Ming-Ji Wu is the Director General of the Department of Industrial Technology (doit.moea.gov.tw), the government body charged with Taiwan’s industrial technology policy and R&D project funding. He has been a key figure in drafting Taiwan’s policy toward developing Hi-Tech related industries and technological innovations over the past decades. The Department of Industrial Technology (DoIT) was established in 1979 and with the mission “enabling innovations towards sustainable development”.

Prior to his appointment as Director General of the DoIT in 2009, Dr. WU held engineer, senior engineer, section chief, deputy director, and director position of the Industrial Development Bureau from 1991-2007, and deputy director general of the DoIT from 2007-2009. As first line policy drafter of the MOEA, Dr. Wu has played an important role in Taiwan’s Hi-tech related industries and technologies development.

Dr. Wu received an MBA from University of Southern California, and Ph.D. in technology management from National Chengchi University.

The era of an aging society with low birth-rate and labor shortage has already arrived. To cope with the social and industrial impacts form the above trend, many advanced countries are devoted to research and development of intelligent robotics and expect this emerging industry will bring the economic growth. Taiwan government currently plans to apply technologies of intelligent robotics and automation to add values on its intelligent manufacturing and service industries in the future. For industrial robots, they will adopt many intelligent sensing and control technologies to cope with more complex and challenging production processes accompanied with the needs of high-mix/low-volume flexible manufacturing and problem of labor shortage. The development of service robots will focus their applications in the field of medical and tourism industries, and provide services through human-robot collaboration. Taiwan government has listed intelligent robotics as one of the national emerging industries. In the future, Taiwan will combine the resources from its industries, government, academia and research institutes, and commit these resources in the intelligent robotics research and its industrial-value creation. It is expected that these will equip Taiwanese manufacturing and service industries with higher productivity, efficiency and service quality.

IROS 2010 Industry Forum

Theme: The Next Robot Industry in Transition