Creative Alliance in Robotics Research and Education Focused on Medical and Service Robotics (CARE Robotics)
PARTNERS
LSRO, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland
coordinator
The LSRO is embedded at EPFL which, as a University, has strong robotics activities on a very broad range, from Artificial Intelligence and life inspired robotics all the way to industrial and high precision robotics. In this context of 6 labs and a leading house of an NCCR (National Center for Competence in Research) at EPFL, LSRO has two groups working on biomedical robotics and devices (Bleuler) and small wheeled mobile robots (Mondada).
CESTER, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania
the EE partner Category B
The Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (TUC-N) was grounded in 1777 and activates as higher education institution since 1948 being the second important Technical University in Romania and one of the eighth higher educational institutions in the city. With 9 Faculties, more than 600 academic staff and over 12,000 students the TUC-N offers courses range from mechanics, material science, robotics, and manufacturing engineering to computer science, telecommunications and control, civil engineering and architecture. The specific equipment for teaching and research, laboratories, computer networks and libraries constitute the support for the educational and scientific activities. The aim of the academic teaching and managerial staff is to activate in accordance with the European standards, by continuously improving and updating the curricula, implementing distance learning, using up-to-date methods and restructuring the educational process (www.utcluj.ro).
TUC-N is affiliated to international organisms like: European Universities Association - EUA (2000), Alliance of Universities for Democracy - AUDEM (2001), Black Sea Universities Network - BSUN (2004), Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (2007 etc).
CESTER is the robotics research centre of the TUC-N, internationally recognized since 2001, made with the financial support of the DAAD (the German Academic Exchange Service) and the Institute for Machine Tools and Production Technology (IWF - Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany), periodically assessed and successfully accredited in 2010 based on the continuous successfully research activity (www.cester.utcluj.ro). Currently, CESTER permanent staff consists of 7 Professors, 4 Associate professors, 4 Assistant professors, 1 Assistant and 17 Ph.D. students (7 women). CESTER target is to attract and support continuously the young researchers and women researchers which should be more and more involved in the existing and upcoming research projects.
CESTER consists of four R&D complementary laboratories with the following main activities:
- Simulation Laboratory
- Parallel Robots Laboratory
- Dynamic System Simulation Laboratory
- Mechatronics Systems in Aerodynamics and Fluid Flow Laboratory
Institute Mihajlo Pupin, IMP, Belgrad, Serbia
the EE partner Category A
The Institute Mihajlo Pupin, the biggest and oldest research institute in the whole South East Europe region in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), is a showcase of successful bridging of academia and industry, a good example of bringing an innovative R&D pool together. Pupin managed to preserve its core ICT competences despite devastating brain-drain and lack of investment in research infrastructure in the two last decades. Brain-drain was caused by both “push-factors” (civil wars and UN economic sanctions imposed against Serbia) and “pull-factors” (coinciding historical climax of global ICT sector, pulling abroad Pupin’s highly qualified researchers). More than 200 researchers left Pupin for Canada, USA, Australia and EU, and institutional links with numerous outstanding international research establishments were broken. The research infrastructure hasn’t been upgraded for a long time, because the country emerging from dissolution of former Yugoslavia that just got rid of war and sanctions had other priorities. The institutions from Serbia became eligible for European funding in the midst of FP6. Until then, Pupin’s research potential was locked in national boundaries, outside of European Research Area (ERA).
Therefore, SCOPES 2009-2012, call 2 presents a great opportunity for Pupin to rectify for all the above-mentioned hindering factors, to attract and keep young researchers obtained from universities, to unlock its existing research potential and fully integrate into ERA, establishing Regional Excellence Center for Information Technologies and Robotics that will serve as the “best practice example” for other R&D players in the region as how to penetrate ERA efficiently and become an integral part of it. CARE-Robotics project will help Pupin (re)establish its partnerships with prominent Swiss and Romanian institutions, and also acquire international experience will undoubtedly help in future Pupin’s FP7 and FP8 proposals success ratio and smoother integration into ERA.
To reach the above objectives, the detailed SWOT analysis is performed, and action plan is developed in collaboration with other two partners to build upon and leverage IMP strengths, to rectify the weaknesses, to prioritize and exploit the opportunities, and head off the threats.
The most successful IMP research laboratory, in sense of scientific results during the period of 45 years of existence, is the Robotics laboratory. Currently, the permanent staff consists of 15 researchers (3 Professors, 2 PhDs, 2 senior researchers, 6 junior researchers, 2 technicians).
Synergy of main research competencies of partnership institutions within the Creative Alliance in Robotics focused to the medical, assistive and service robotics as core of collaboration