euRobotics Technology Transfer Award 2012

The ninth euRobotics Tech Transfer Award was presented during the European Robotics Forum 2012.  This year, the winner was ARMin, a system that enables robot-assisted neurorehabilitation of the arm.  Members of the team who carried off the 3,000 Euro first prize were also involved in last year’s second prize winner SIMone, an interactive robotic birth simulator.

The roboticists who gathered in Odense, Denmark for the Forum on March 5th-7th heard presentations from all five finalists during the second day of the conference.  The prize was announced at the Gala Dinner held the same evening.  Henrik A. Schunk, managing partner of SCHUNK and chairman of EUnited Robotics, commented: “The Tech Transfer Award is awarded to groups or organisations that have been successful in transferring their research results into real-life, commercial systems.  With our members encompassing scientific labs and industry the Award encapsulates our ethos in its purest sense”

The winning presentation was given by Prof. Robert Riener from ETH Zurich and University of Zurich.  He was accompanied by his colleague and industrial partner, Dr. Alexander Duschau-Wicke from Hocoma AG, Switzerland.

Martin Hägele, head of the Robot Systems division of the Fraunhofer IPA, presented both the presentations and the awards.  “This year, the projects included TeleMax, a telerobotic product for use in hazardous environments, the Reflexxes Motion Libraries, a suite of algorithms to generate trajectories for robots on the fly, a new approach for service robotics software development and RobM@RKET, an autonomous mobile manipulator for packaging or kitting.  However, besides the demonstrated ingenious design it was the impressive route to market in only 18 months that led to the ARMin team being picked as winners.”

> Press release - Persistence Pays Off in Tech Transfer Award 2012