IERA Award 2008 goes to Daimler and Kiva Systems

4th IEEE-IFR Invention & Entrepreneurship Award in Robotics & Automation presented in Munich

The jury had a particularly difficult choice to make this year, so that two companies received the IERA Award 2008: Daimler for its innovative assembly system based on cooperating robots for the new C class cars, and, at the same time, Kiva Systems for a novel logistics concept based on mobile robots.

An overall five companies were in the final group of contenders for the IERA 2008 competition that is to award innovation and entrepreneurship in the fields of robotics and automation technology and to foster cooperation between the scientific community and the industry. The Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) of the international engineers' association IEEE represents the scientists. The IFR, the federation grouping the various robotic associations (International Federation of Robotics) stands for the robotics industry. The jury was composed of three distinguished members from each of the IEEE and the IFR. During the "IEEE-IFR Joint Forum of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation" all contenders were given the opportunity to present their innovations and entrepreneurial achievements to the highexpert audience.They showed how multi-faceted robotics and automation technology can actually be and gave brief lectures on cooperating stationary industrial robots used for assembly (Daimler, Stuttgart, Germany), cooperating mobile robots for logistics (Kiva Systems, Woburn, USA), handling robots acting at cyber speed with novel kinematic structures (Adept, Livermore, USA), robots capable to fetch subordinate objects from a box (Scape Technologies, Odense, Denmark), and unmanned ground vehicles weighing several tons that remove excavated materials from mines (CSIRO, Kenmore, Australia). Following the presentations, the jury askedchallenging questions and finally came to the conclusion that Daimler and Kiva System did best.

During the dinner event to which the participants came at the fringe of the largest German robotics conference in connection with the Automatica 2008, the laureates were announced. "We are very pleased with our decision." says Mr. Stefan Müller, IFR-President, who presented the certificates together with IEEE-RAS President Prof. Dr. Bruno Siciliano. In their laudations, Müller and Siciliano pointed out that the winners were two fine examples for absolutely different success stories and that it was possible for major global players as well as for a start-up company to come to exquisite innovations and demonstrate entrepreneurial excellence. On the one hand, there is Daimler, a big concern safeguarding their production sites in a high income country such as Germany by using a flexible assembly system that can be used for manifold
processes and that is based on 40 cooperating KUKA robots. A novel concept enables Daimler to assemble the rear axles for the new C class from various different parts without the need of clamping devices and conveyor belts and hand the entire piece over to a redesigned manual workplace. On the other hand, there is Kiva Systems, a start-up company that has managed to attract substantial investment capital within only four years, raising its workforce from 3 to now 80 employees to develop a novel, self-optimizing warehouse and material handling system based on cooperating mobile robots. The largest installation that is currently in use for a big supermarket chain in the US comprises more than 500 mobile robots.

This year, the IERA Award is awarded for the fourth time already. During all these years, the variety of contenders has been as large as the bandwidth of the winners: autonomous vacuum cleaners (iRobot, USA, 2005), collision-avoiding industrial robots (KUKA Roboter, Germany, 2006) and port automation systems (Patrick Technologies, Australia, 2007). The award has always been celebrated at the fringe of a major IEEE or IFR robotic event. In 2009 the winner is to be found in Kobe, Japan, where the world's largest robotics conference will be held.

To foster innovation paired with entrepreneurial spirit and make the best possible use of
synergies between science and industry in the fields of robotics and automation is the aim of the IERA Award, that is presented jointly by the IFR (International Federation of Robotics) and the IEEE RAS (IEEE Robotics and Automation Society).