Innovation Award 2020: Medical Robotics Challenge
This year, the KUKA Innovation Award’s international jury of experts received a total of more than 40 ideas. The five finalist teams had time until November to implement their ideas. A KUKA LBR Med lightweight robot – the first robotic component to be certified for integration into a medical device – has been made available to them for this purpose. Beyond this, the teams have received a training for the hardware and coaching from KUKA experts throughout the competition. At virtual.MEDICA from 16-19.11.2020, the finalists presented their concepts to an international audience of experts and to the Innovation Award jury. The winner of the KUKA Innovation Award 2020, worth 20,000 euros, is Team HIFUSK from the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Italy.
About the KUKA Innovation Award
The award is being presented for the seventh time. As the world's leading company in robot-based automation, KUKA has been working closely with scientists and R&D partners worldwide on various scientific and technical topics for many years. To strengthen this cooperation, the KUKA Innovation Award was launched in 2014.
The competition aims to accelerate the overall pace of innovation in the field of robot-based automation and to strengthen technology transfer from research to industry. It addresses developers, graduates and research teams of companies or universities.
Innovation Award 2021: Artificial Intelligence Challenge
The application phase for the 2021 Innovation Award has been completed: The applicants were asked to select new use cases in which robots today face serious challenges in interacting with their real environment. The proposed solution was supposed to be versatile, i.e. widely applicable, ideally also outside the submitted application.
It was required that the applications cover a wide range of sectors, from manufacturing industry and agriculture to inspection, maintenance and end users. By adding Artificial Intelligence to existing robotic systems, the aim is to revolutionize the way humans and robots work together.
The finalists and their concepts will be presented here shortly.