This year’s General Assembly (GA) in Stavanger voted to ratify the admission into membership of a dozen organisations of various types which had joined euRobotics during the year since the last GA. Over this year’s remaining editions of the newsletter we will introduce them, largely in their own words.
We begin by welcoming Orbit Rise from the UK and Belgium’s Royal Military Academy – Department of Mechatronics and Robotics.
Location: Lincoln, UK
Membership type: Industry
Website: www.orbitrise.co.uk
OrbitRise is a UK-based consultancy company specialising in translating robotics, control and automation research into innovative real-world products and services. OrbitRise supports industrial collaborators in their space robotic missions and actively steers technology transfer between the space and terrestrial sectors spanning energy and agri-food sectors. Alongside advancing the frontiers of scientific research and technological innovation, OrbitRise collaborates with national and international stakeholders on regulatory aspects of space missions.
Prof. (Hon) Dr. Mini Chakravarthini Rai is the founding Director of OrbitRise and brings nearly 30 years of research and innovation experience in space engineering and technology.
OrbitRise’s vision is to explore, discover, access and enable safe and sustainable use of space resources to enhance lives on Earth. Its stated mission is to drive research, development and innovation in robotic engineering and technology to build a competitive market and resilient Earth-Space ecosystem.
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Membership type: Research
Website: https://mecatron.rma.ac.be/
The Robotics & Autonomous Systems lab is a research unit of the department of Mechanics of the Belgian Royal Military Academy.
As a university laboratory, we conduct research in all matters related to unmanned systems: on one hand trying to develop novel “good” applications for these systems and on the other hand trying to find solutions to counter the potential malicious use of these systems.
As a military research institute and part of Belgian Defence, we focus on niche fundamental research axes and apply those to practical applications that provide a direct added value for our end users, mostly in the safety, security and defence sectors. The Royal Military Academy is the University of Belgian Defence. The Robotics & Autonomous Systems unit (RAS) of the department of Mechanics performs research in the domain of robotics for security and defence applications. RAS develops collaborative strategies between robots (swarming, multi-agent coordination) and humans (human-agent teaming) across air, ground, and maritime domains, while also studying protection against hostile robotics. Research focuses on GNSS-denied navigation, precision drone landing on vessels, human-friendly swarm control, maritime mine countermeasures, multi-domain interoperability for disaster response, ground-based mine and IED detection and disposal, combat unmanned ground systems with swarming capabilities, counter-drone performance assessment, drone threat analysis, and cybersecurity for robotic systems.