ERF 2021 Workshop – Human Robot collaboration and AI for Sustainable Production

The European Robotics Forum 2021 (ERF2021) will be held online 13-15 April 2021.

AIM and Scope

The workshop deals with the Human Robot Collaboration and AI for Sustainable Production. This workshop focuses on the aspect of collaborative robots for developing sustainable production mainly dealing with topics related to remanufacturing, recycling, true robot collaboration to ease workload on human workers. When considering production scenarios, efficiency and productivity of Human robot collaboration and its application were dealt with quite extensively. However, human robot collaboration and its application for a sustainable production has been dealt only marginally. This workshop with the ERF 2021 as its venue aims to open the dialogue between participants from industry and academia to discuss the current challenges pertaining to sustainability in Production, possible solutions with hybrid human robot collaborative teams to solve the challenges. The speakers (from industry and academia) will shed light on the existing challenges, detail success stories and pave way for the interactive discussion with the audience.

Expected Outcome:

• Trigger information exchange between academia and industry about the current challenges and possible solutions for sustainable production with the help human robot collaboration
• A position paper on the results of the workshop and share it, e.g., with the respective topic group/s. This will also form as a basis for the EU funded FELICE project to get stakeholder’s feedback

Invited Speakers:

• Prof. Joachim Hertzberg, DFKI
• Dr. Tuomas J Lukka, HipCode
• Dr. Francesco Longo, CALTEK
• Dr. Massimo Di Pardo CRF
• Dr. Manolis Lourakis, FORTH

Organizers of the workshop:

• Sharath Chandra Akkaladevi, Profactor GmbH (https://at.linkedin.com/in/sharathakkaladevi)
• Dr. Maria Pateraki, National Technical University of Athens, Institute of Computer Science – FORTH (http://www.mpateraki.org)
• Franziska Kirstein, Blue Ocean Robotics (linkedin.com/in/fkirstein)
• Ao.Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Markus Vincze (http://www.acin.tuwien.ac.at/institut/mvincze/)

The workshop is co-organized with in the FELICE project.

More information:

• Programm
• Slides

Join us in the online event M3d+it 2020 on Medical 3D-printing and Innovative Technologies!

After two successful editions organized by the Medical University of Vienna at the Vienna General Hospital, this year, M3d+it 2020 will be an online event organized by PROFACTOR and Johannes Kepler University Linz.

The online event 2020 will also act as a teaser for the M3d+it 2021 to be held at Kepler Universitätsklinikum in Linz, again as physical event.

Looking forward to welcome you in this online event!

For registration, please use following link: https://www.m3dit.org/

Organized by

In Cooperation with

In conjunction with the European Robotics Forum 2020, 03-05 March 2020, Malaga, Spain

Aim and Scope

Collaborative robots in industry are mostly underused, since they are mainly regarded as tools that relieve workers of physical fatigue and enhance their capabilities, but enjoy very limited autonomy and intelligence.

There is an immediate need for endowing robots with intelligent processing skills and shared autonomy capabilities, so that they can take over some tasks, thus relieving human operators of mental and physical effort, especially in complex tasks and scenarios.

There are various challenges to efficiently integrate HRC system to the industrial workplaces, among which include intuitive and ease of interaction, safety and intelligent interaction.

The following topics will be discussed:

• What are the current challenges and experiences when integrating HRC to industrial workplaces
• How can user easily interact with the robot
• What AI technologies can be exploited to endow intelligence to HRC systems for faster integration

To facilitate different perspectives, two speakers (one from industry and one from academia) each for one topic, will shortly discuss and present their findings. This is followed by a group discussion, where the two speakers responsible for the topic will actively moderate the discussion. A panel discussion at the end will present the relevant conclusions and ex-tempore discussion.

This workshop is adapted continuation of a successful past ERF workshops (ERF2018 – Beyond Smart Robots and ERF2019 – Collaborative robots for industrial and professional service tasks), bringing together end users, academics, industry and policy makers. The workshop aims to present lessons learned from various EU and industry projects, the real deployment of robots in different industrial applications as well as needs and potential uses identified by the end users.

Workshop Agenda (4 March 2020)

08:30 – 08:35 Opening comments by the organizers:

• Prof. Markus Vincze, TU Vienna
• Fotis Dimeas, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

08:35 – 09:05 Impulse talks by our invited speakers:

• Sylvain Calinon, IDIAP
• Turgut Köksal Yalcin, Arcelik A.S.
• George Michalos, Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems & Automation
• Christoph Walter, Fraunhofer IFF Magdeburg
• Carlos Celemins Paez, Delft University of Technology
• Sotiris Manitsaris, Mines Paristech
• Jure Skrabar, Kolektor

09:05 – 09:35 Group Discussion

09:35 – 09:55 Panel Discussion

09:55 – 10:00 Wrap-up of findings by the organizers:

• Sharath Chandra Akkaladevi, Profactor
• Franziska Kirstein, Blue Ocean Robotics

Organizers

The “Human-Robot Collaboration & AI for industrial applications” workshop is jointly organized by PROFACTOR, TU Vienna and the CoLLaboratE Project