Academia and industry are natural partners. Academia brings fresh perspective and envelope-pushing methodologies to industrial problems. Industry shares real world experience and challenges to stimulate and energize academic research. There are also multiple potential barriers that may impede close collaboration. This talk will share our experience at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in bridging academia and industry in the area of robotics and automation for manufacturing. We will discuss the critical role of public-private partnerships, such as the ARM Institute, NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program and the New York State NYSTAR program. Several ARM projects will be highlighted to illustrate how universities and companies can work together to tackle challenging industrial robotics problems, including robotic handling of non-rigid materials, robot assistant to human workers, and robot force control using iterative learning.
ARM Member-to-Member Talk, 3/9/22.