Creative Alliance in Robotics Research and Education Focused on Medical and Service Robotics (CARE Robotics)
OBJECTIVES
The objective of 3-years CARE-Robotics project regards to increasing research and institutional capacities and capabilities and unlocking research potential of the East European academic and R&D Institutions EEI (Center for Industrial Robots Simulation and Testing (CESTER), Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania and Robotics Laboratory, Institute Mihajlo Pupin (IMP), University of Belgrade, Serbia), turning them into a point of reference when it comes to multidisciplinary ICT competence. If the project is successful, the beneficiary institutions from Serbia and Romania will become regional excellence centers for ICT and specifically for robotics, fully integrated into the European Research Area (ERA), capable of helping all the other stakeholders in the region (Universities, Research institutes, IT companies, SMEs in IT sector etc.) to strengthen their EU competitiveness in complementary areas. This will be achieved by gaining and enhancing multidisciplinary ICT competence necessary for complex, high impact robotic application development, via strategic partnership and exchange of know-how with prominent Switzerland research establishment at Laboratoire de Systemes Robotiques (LSRO), EPFL Lausanne. The cooperation has already been agreed and interest expressed in corresponding Letters of Commitment among 3 research institutions mentioned above, representing Switzerland (as coordinator), Serbia (Category A) and Romania (Category B).
Scheme of the capacity building of EEI according to the SCOPES 2009-2012 program with the partnership’s horizontal and vertical interaction, supported approaching to the ERA and expected side effects towards the national and regional academic and industrial sector
CARE–Robotics aims towards the development of a partnership structure (alliance) in the field of service and medical robotics in order to define clear future research directions for further joint works within other European research projects. This alliance is coordinated by Prof. Hannes Bleuler (LSRO) as project manager having as Swiss co-applicant Prof. Francesco Mondada (LSRO) and partner managers: Prof. Doina Pisla (CESTER) and Prof. Aleksander Rodic (IMP). The alliance could give a new dimension of the network competencies on the European map. Besides the network structuring and the implementation, the Robotics Laboratory, IMP, Serbia is defined as the Eastern-European Pilot Center which is the first project beneficiary in order to prove the efficiency of this new Alliance for its future education and research activities in robotics. The key objectives of CARE-Robotics are: Build strategic partnership of Eastern European Institutions (EEI) with prominent Swiss research establishments; Reinforce S&T excellence in common research areas, via numerous joint activities within the strategic partnership networks; Combine and aggregate competences and experience in core research areas and prove EEI capability to undertake high-impact ICT projects that contribute most to regional sustainable development; Recruit respectful experienced researchers and managers with extensive international experience, proven publication record and research project acquisition, and management capabilities; Upgrade research equipment to complement building of capabilities of EEI’s researchers in selected ICT areas; Organize joint events in order to intensify network building and exchange of know-how with strategic partners and other invited players from EU ICT sector; Promote newly established regional excellence centers through innovative Semantic Web portal, forums, blogs, electronic newsletters, regular press releases, brochures, and via regular contacts with all regional stakeholders; Regularly and objectively assess the achievement of the above key-objectives, set assessment criteria, identify potential risk sources risk, the probability of expected impact, and design efficient contingency plans to rectify their impact.
The premises for future development of this new alliance are the research and education background of each partner as well as the outstanding theoretical and applied results of the key members involved in the project. They will allow the delineation of the major orientation of the network both in the formation period and in also the activities after the end of the project. This orientation could lead from the research point of view to a knowledge-based robotics development and from the educational point of view to a knowledge-based-society considering the long life learning components - robotics from the childhood to Ph.D. research. The major orientation is towards robotized systems for medical applications (eg: surgery, minimally invasive interventions, rehabilitation, medical simulators, home care systems etc) which joint three of the robotics fields: processing robotics, exploratory robotics and service robotics.