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

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INESC TEC joins SME Robotics initiative