Technology Campus Cham: Report
If you live outside of Bavaria and feel that your state government is not doing enough about robotics, please send the link to this article to your district representative (Landtag). From experience, members of parliament are very committed, but sometimes they need to be sensitized.
The invitation of Michael Zankl, technology and network manager of the Upper Palatinate district, was accepted by a remarkable 50 participants, the majority of whom represented medium-sized companies. (The number of participants is therefore remarkable, since a renowned MRK event of a well-known organizer had to be cancelled due to a lack of sufficient participants).
Following the presentation of the latest call for funding from the Free State of Bavaria for joint projects in the field of robotics by Dr. Jürgen Dam from the project sponsor VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH requested Alexander Stögerthe operational manager of the Cham Technology Campus, asked some students to present their current projects. In addition to various 3D printing systems with a total value of €1.5 million, which are also available to companies in the region for the production of prototypes, the campus also owns a considerable range of cobots. The author saw 3 x Universal Robots, 2 x MIR (mobile robots), plus devices from Yaskawa, Fanuc and Franka and this particular robot:
The robot, which is not a cobot (i.e. is not sensitive), was self-made or printed (arm and gripper) with material costs of about 700 euros and was able to sort Lego bricks by color. After the presentation of the existing purchased robots, it was shown how Alexa from Amazon can be used for cobots. By depositing various voice commands, a UR followed the voice of its master, as the video (unfortunately not optimal quality) shows:
This application once again suggests the great potential of speech recognition for the collaborative use of robots. Speech recognition will probably be able to prevent older skilled workers from taking early retirement in just a few years: If the work itself is still fun, but the lifting is too heavy, the cobot can simply do it on command.
Following these lively and impressive demonstrations, there was the opportunity to look for suitable partners for a potentially eligible robotics project. Due to the new 15% bonus, smaller companies can now get more than 50% of their costs reimbursed. Mobile solutions in particular are also likely to benefit from new funding (here a MIR "solo" and a Universal Robots on a MIR):
The author of this blog is available for market research or even a walk through your production/manufacturing at a fixed price(detail), and then make specific proposals for the use of cobots and other robots incl. funding opportunities. Both SMEs and large companies are visited. Among other things in Bavaria a 50% investment promotion is conceivable. The standard book on cobots also comes from him.