SPARC | 11.05.2017
#Smartregions with smart robots in Tweets
 

About 200 robotics experts and local, regional, and national authorities discussed how to develop regional innovation strategies based on robotics at the “Smart regions with smart robots” event in Brussels on 10 May at the Committee of Regions. Under the hashtag #smartregions, this very first event looking into the potential that robotics has for Europe’s regions, benefitted from over 700,000 impressions on Twitter.

The event kicked off with a dive into robotics opportunities for regions with keynotes by hight level speakers: Dr Juha Heikkilä - Head of Unit Robotics & AI DG CONNECT (European Commission), Dr. Bernd Liepert - President of euRobotics aisbl, MEP Mady Delvaux and Markku Markkula - President of the European Committee of the Regions.

The event was packed with a lot of presentations about robotics case studies and success stories from regions. The first workshop covered the impact of robotics on local economies and societies in various fields such as manufacturing, inspection, agriculture, mining or health, to name a few.

The event has also been the main showcase for success stories from regional clusters and digital innovation hubs, during the second workshop “Testimonies from Regions: Towards Digital Innovation Hubs in Robotics”.

The workshop “Towards a network of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) in Robotics” concluded the meeting.

The exhibit floor was also the main venue for networking, and featured EU projects robots: Tibi - an urban robot part of the URSUS EU-funded project, and ARSI – a small aerial robot for sewer inspection, funded under ECHORD++, both from Barcelona, the Cyberlegs prosthesis funded under FP7, and the AMP-foot project funded by FWO (Flanders) and Innoviris (Brussel Capital Region).

Beyond the exhibit floor, networking between regional representatives and roboticists took place during the breaks and regions were invited to contribute to a catalogue to show case their success stories.

The “Smart regions with smart robots” event was organised by the Robotics and AI Unit - DG CONNECT, European Commission and euRobotics under SPARC, the Public-Private partnership for Robotics in Europe and it was hosted by the European Committee of Regions. All attendees agreed that the event has been very useful and successful. And you know it was a success when Markku Markkula, President of the Committee of Regions was chatting with Tibi, a lady robot, in the exhibition area.

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