IMA and collaborative robotics at the SUGAR Expo Cloud

The SUGAR Expo Cloud was held in early June, one of the largest global innovation events in the world – an initiative hosted every year in California but this year for the first time entirely online. An event to touch the future of many of the most interesting sectors of the moment: from robotics to artificial intelligence, from healthcare to big data.

SUGAR (the organization behind the initiative) is the global network that unites universities, companies and worldwide organizations to work together on the future of innovation and create new solutions that have a real impact on society and people. In SUGAR philosophy, a series of design-related challenges are launched by partner companies and collected and brought to solution by two groups of students from different universities. Supported by mentors or tutors, students are guided through a design process focused on Design Thinking, an approach characterized by a constant attitude towards research, by the central and primary role of the users.

This year in particular IMA Group collaborated with the University of Bologna and Stanford University proposing a robotics challenge to the two universities and the two groups of students involved: rethinking the human-robot collaboration in industrial environments to increase safety and efficiency, a hot topic in modern production contexts.

SUGAR Expo Cloud was an opportunity to celebrate the closure of the project and to share the successful milestones achieved in the research proposed by IMA Group together with the two universities and the teams of students involved: “We are very happy with the results of the project and with the steps forward in rethinking human-robot cooperation”, commented Davide Baraccani, R&D Mechanical Technical Dept. IMA Group. “The aim of the challenge proposed to the two universities involved was to redesign the communication tools between robots and operators, improve working conditions and efficiency without compromising safety in industrial environments. Open topics on which the multidisciplinary student team has concentrated its efforts and found concrete design and prototyping solutions – such as the use of ground projectors for the luminous profiling of the working areas and the triangulation-based UWB technology, for the physical identification of operators and mobile elements such as AGV platforms”.