The next round of the KUKA Innovation Award has begun: up to July 2, young researchers from all over the world were called upon to submit their concepts addressing this year’s topic: the “Real-world Interaction Challenge”. The winner will receive a monetary prize of 20,000 euro.
This year’s competition focuses on robots that can interact outside as well as inside the industrial environment, with emphasis on direct support for humans. The concept and presentation of the applications should be as realistic as possible.
To enable fair comparison of the concepts, KUKA provides each of the final teams with a flexFellow – a mobile robotic unit on which an LBR iiwa (a sensitive lightweight robot for safe human-robot collaboration) is mounted. Beyond this, a 3D vision system from the start-up company Roboception will be available.
An international jury of experts has selected the best concepts from among all the entries at the end of July. The finalists now realize their ideas with a KUKA robot. They will present their developments to an international audience of specialists at a major flagship trade fair in 2018. There, the jury will crown the winner of the renowned competition. Soon, we'll present the final teams here.
