Slowly but surely, organisers of the ERF workshops are uploading reports and copies of their presentations from Rotterdam. We want to make sure all euRobotics members get a flavour of the workshops and other sessions that took place in Rotterdam. If you led a workshop, please upload your workshop reports and supporting documents in the relevant folder in the public directory: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BuYls2cC82E-nZvcbL9rCqbL9hJBJogb?usp=sharing .
Meanwhile, here are two workshop reports from ERF 2022 in Rotterdam:
- A Future With Avatar Robots
- From One-off Deployments to I&M Robotics in Continuous Operation
WORKSHOP: A Future With Avatar Robots
Organisers:
- Douwe Dresscher, University of Twente
- Jan van Erp, TNO
- Jerome Perret, Haption
- Fred Galstaun, Sensiks
Speakers/Panellists:
- Jetske Verkerk, Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs & Climate Policy
- Eva Helmond, STT
- Jan van Erp, TNO
- David Locke, XPRIZE
Workshop highlights
Please refer to the summary of the discussion
Conclusions/next steps
Please refer to the summary of the discussion
WORKSHOP: From One-off Deployments to I&M Robotics in Continuous Operation
Organisers:
- Aksel Transeth, SINTEF AS
- Ekkehard Zwicker, Waygate Technologies
- Maarit Sandelin, SPRINT Robotics Collaborative
Speakers/Panellists:
- Robert Dreier Holand, Tiepoint AS
- Karsten Sausen, Anybotics
- Bob Raida, HEBI Robotics
- Anette Uttisrud, Equinor
- Peter van Amsterdam, Waygate Technologies
- Antidio Viguria Jiménez, CATEC
Workshop highlights
By “continuous operations” we mean robotics in I&M that are used as the standard tool for solving specific tasks and not just tested for a limited amount of time.
Business case and changing to robotics:
- Need to demonstrate solid business cases for robotics in I&M with scalable solutions – scale has in many cases not been achieved yet.
- Need robots that are easily deployed and intuitive to use. Light weight is also a benefit.
- Increased safety is an important driver for I&M robotics.
- Focus on what jobs robots should do, and not on detailing tech specifications.
Need success stories for I&M robotics in continuous operations:
- Need to demonstrate and share success stories – high-value use cases – without disturbing day-to-day operations. With high reliability and durability, doing operations better (safer, faster, more accurate, etc.) than how these are currently done.
- Need motivated people who can lead the way and are willing to take risk – and include those who are sceptical.
- Much easier to do one-off deployments than getting robots recognized as a standard tool for a job. For example, budgets for one-off/test deployments are different than budgets from other parts of an end-user’s organization engaged in day-to-day operations.
- “A learning journey”: Need close collaboration between end-users and suppliers on use cases, data integration, etc.
Robots that are “good enough” is enough:
- Remotely operated robots (as opposed to autonomous robots) can be good enough in the short term for some use cases, and they can help to get operators used to using robots.
- No robot will be used for “all” tasks.
Establishing a better understanding of realistic needs and possibilities:
- Need further close dialogue throughout the value chain to understand and explore opportunities.
Contracts:
- Current contract models may still be inhibiting usage of robots, but contract models have been maturing in recent years.
- Some contracts not realistic in terms of potential size: Some end-users establish large contracts for “potential work” with suppliers. But there is a challenge that this potential is often not fulfilled.
Robots (including drones) generate lots of data, but how to use it?
- Need to achieve a better understanding of what data is good enough (e.g., some end users ask for “all” data, without realizing the quantity of data they are asking for) and what the data can be used for.
- Need data standardization.
Workshop participants: around 25 % from the supplier industry, 25 % end-users, and 50 % from within research.
Conclusions/next steps
The workshop aided in achieving a better common understanding throughout the value chain regarding the challenges, needs and opportunities in inspection and maintenance robotics as well as the vision for the future. Moreover, the workshop facilitated new connections to be made and discussions regarding potential collaboration on, e.g., EU proposals were initiated. A follow-up workshop proposal for ERF2023 is being considered. Moreover, insights from the workshop will be used as basis for future EU proposals and scientific papers on I&M robotics.
Links to the workshop slide presentations can be found here.