European Robotics aims to bridge the gap between HAZOPER (Hazardous Materials Incident Response Operations) users, industry and research in the field of ground robotics.
Nowadays industry plays the „leading“ role in robotics in the sense that it often defines the robotic capabilities available. Many times this results in more or less standard robots being introduced into the HAZOPER without very thoroughly defined functional requirements.
This might be an appropriate approach for those cases where the users have no vision themselves on how to use robotic support in HAZOPER. But many users do have a view of their own on their desired use of robotics. These views are often characterised by short-term objectives and a limited understanding of technical issues.
Research instead has usually no short-term objective and often fails to provide practical applications. Ignoring scientific results, however, prevents interesting and innovative developments. Industry, especially medium-sized enterprises, should use research to fertilise their strategic development process.
So, many times there is a gap between the industry’s understanding of robots needed, the appliance of research results and the HAZOPER users‘ understanding of robot technology as well as the technical feasibility of their requirements.
European Robotics aims to solve this situation by bringing together users, industry and researchers.
