F R O M T H E G U E S T E D I T O R S
Industrial Robotics Applications and
Industry-Academia Cooperation in Europe
J. Norberto Pires, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Klas Nilsson, Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden
Henrik G. Petersen, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
T
his special issue is about manufacturing robotics in
Europe. Manufacturing has a strong basis in Europe,
especially for small industries that quite dynamically
carry out an important part of the total manufacturing effort
in response to changing product requirements. To meet a
wide variety of demands on efficiency and flexibility, a com-
bination of automation systems and human labor must be
used. Robots should be considered as coworkers, working in
close cooperation with humans. Advances in the use of robots
in actual industrial setups calls for real partnership work
between academia and industry. Research and development
(R&D) on manufacturing requires a systems perspective with
domain knowledge, system integrators, and research actors,
making it different from most academic research.
Consequently, the need for industrial thinking within
research in academia is very important. The obvious discrep-
ancy between the state of the art in robotics research versus
actual utilized technology deserves attention in different ways.
If we want to promote direct contact between researchers
(who usually write papers) and industrial engineers (who nor-
mally do not read papers), then results have to be put in a true
industrial perspective. Packaging results (e.g., in useful soft-
ware), building prototypes, and carrying out collaboration
projects are some means to this end. Furthermore, in almost
any real industrial application, there are key aspects that aca-
demic research wishes to neglect (possibly for good reasons)
but may have to address to achieve results that are within a
sufficient industrial perspective. An interesting trend that we
think can be seen in the articles of this issue, is that industrial
systems actually are getting more and more useful for applied
but advanced robotics research. Many of the research results
of some 20 years ago are now used inside highly optimized
motion controllers, but to meet the demands on interaction
and flexibility, the industrially useful systems (that in practice
never will be developed in academia) need to be extendable
with additional sensing, control, and interaction. Industry and
academia meet both in persons and in systems.
Just as the robot is the most flexible type of machine, the
small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) is the most flexible
type of company. Manufacturing is facing a major new chal-
lenge: the use of robotics in SMEs. Europe is characterized by
a long tradition of manufacturing products with a significant
knowledge component, i.e., products that integrate significant
domain knowledge to achieve a competitive price and quali-
ty. Furthermore, the European economy depends heavily on
SMEs. The Observatory of European SMEs 2002 (published in
SEPTEMBER 2005
2002) shows that there are approximately 20,445,000 compa-
nies in Europe (according to 2002 data). From those compa-
nies, 20,415,000 are SMEs (93% are microcompanies, 6% are
small companies, and 0.8% are medium companies) and only
40,000 are big companies (0.2%). This classification comes
from the definition established in 2003 by the European
Commission: A microcompany is a company that has up to
ten workers and a total revenue up to €2 million; a small
company employees up to 50 workers with a total revenue of
up to €10 million; and a medium company employees up to
250 workers with a total revenue up to €50 million.
The Observatory for European SME clearly shows a sce-
nario where the effort to increase competitiveness and pro-
ductivity should be accomplished by creating conditions for
strong SMEs.
Europe is experiencing increased competition from other
regions, in particular Asia, having a different salary structure,
social organization, and social protection. In parallel, there is a
significant aging in our society that requires significant increas-
es in industrial efficiency to remain competitive. New manu-
facturing techniques will be required as part of this process.
This poses a significant challenge, particularly when deployed
in SMEs. To remain competitive, SMEs will have to consider
how automation and robotics can be used in manufacturing.
However, robotic systems also must be better adapted to SME
needs, which call for more flexible and easy-to-use systems.
We think the enclosed articles present starting points for such
R&D, clearly involving both industry and academia.
By 1 May 2004, the European Community was expanded
from 15 countries to 25 countries, including Cyprus, Czech
Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland,
Slovakia, and Slovenia. These states have a different history,
and it is only now that the European Community is starting
to consider how they can be integrated into the research fab-
ric of the wider community, which is going to pose a major
challenge for the next five to ten years.
From a research point of view, the needed user-friendly
shop-floor interaction between human workers and robots poses
many research challenges. Improvements in flexibility and abili-
ties to deal with force interaction are key aspects. These
improvements form a basis for industrially useful systems that can
be extended towards human-robot space sharing as needed in
SMEs, but the challenges also call for contributions from other
parts of the (industrial and academic) robotics community.
In this issue, eight articles were selected that reflect very
interesting industry-academia cooperation. These articles
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 5
cover, for example, force control and supervision,
autonomous robot welding, automatic path generation for
industrial applications, robot cooperation, and computer
vision in robotics. Perspectives from experienced research lab-
oratories and companies are also given, revealing a clear pic-
ture of what can be done to assist industry in the future quest
for competitiveness and productivity. It is also important that
we increase the collaborative efforts between academia and
industry to develop new robotic prototypes for specific ranges
of industrial applications that cannot be automated with exist-
ing robotic hardware. Afterwards, these prototypes can then
serve as the starting point for robotics and automation manu-
facturers to commercialize desired new robotics and automa-
tion general solutions.
The selected articles (and several other high-quality
pieces that, due to space limitations, could not be included
in this issue) show a clear desire and interest from both acad-
6 IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine
emia and industry to cooperate and constitute a sample of
successful projects that are being developed all over Europe.
For the future, and also as an important part of the efforts
within the SMEROBOT European Union (EU) project
(http://www.smerobot.org), financed recently by the 6th
EU R&D research program, and within the EURON
research network (http://www.euron.org), the research and
applications within manufacturing must be promoted in all
states and, hopefully, also in other parts of the world aiming
for a European style of life and wealth.
Finally, the European Union (EU) has outlined the
challenges for the seventh framework program, and robot-
ics is an integral part of at least one third of them. The EU
will try to figure out if robotics can be one of the priority
areas for the 2007–2010 period, which could be highly
interesting for the increase of the industry-academia R&D
effort within Europe.
SEPTEMBER 2005