On September 20-26, the Russian Robotics Week was held in St. Petersburg for the third time
Russian Robotics Week 2021, like the previous ones, was held as part of the European Robotics Week, which has been held in European countries since 2011.
The organizers of the Russian Robotics Week this year were the Cluster of high science-intensive technologies and engineering of the Northwestern Federal District “Creonomyca” and the SUAI University. General partners of the event are KUKA and Concern R-Pro. Official partners: EU Robotics, SICK, Inrotech, Delfoi, Visual Components, Rethink Robotics, Juran Global, Mitsubishi Electric, Aviatech, HOMAG, LLS, Suprotec, R-Pro Consulting, PLM-Ural, Pride Automatics, World Skills Russia, St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, St. Petersburg State University of Economics, Institute of Innovative Technologies in Business, HR-Prof, Waters of Health, as well as the Museum of Theater and Music.
The events of the Robotics Week began with the opening of a robotics competition for schoolchildren and students. The official opening ceremony of the competition took place on September 21 at the SUAI Engineering School. The students were greeted and wished successful performances: Rector of the SUAI University Yulia Antokhina, Chairman of the Board of the Cluster Creonomyca Alexey Korablev, Director of Foreign Economic Activity at KUKA Robotics Olga Ekaterinina, Director of the SUAI School of Engineering Sergey Solyony.
For two days on September 22 and 23, the Industrial Robotics Forum was held at the Boiling Point of SUAI, which brought together more than 150 people. Among them were representatives of various domestic and foreign companies, ranging from robot manufacturers of the world’s leading companies, including system integrators and software developers for controlling robots, and ending with domestic companies of various industries and scales that use or are only planning to introduce robots. The Forum was also attended by representatives of state authorities, who hope for the intensive development of robotics, representatives of universities, institutes and colleges interested in training personnel for robotic industries.
The opening of the Forum took place on September 22, with welcoming words attended by the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education Dmitry Afanasyev, special. Representative of the Governor of St. Petersburg for Economic Development Anatoly Kotov, Rector of St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation Yulia Antokhina, Chairman of the Board of the Cluster Creonomyca Alexey Korablev and General Director of KUKA Robotics Dmitry Kapishnikov.The moderator was Olga Korableva, Doctor of Economics, prof. St. Petersburg State University, expert in strategy and project management in the field of intelligent technologies and R&D at the Institute of Science-Intensive Economy «Creonomyca».
After the opening, the exhibition exposition of the forum was examined, where the stands of KUKA, Mitsubishi Electric, Aviatech, HOMAG, LLS, R-Pro, Inrotech, Pride Automatics, the Institute of Innovative Technologies in Business were presented. And then a plenary discussion, which was devoted to the discussion of modern trends in the development of industrial robotics. It was attended by Kim Reslev, Commercial Director of KUKA Nordic, Baltic & Russia (Denmark), Gert Jorgenson, General Director of Inrotech (Denmark), Heiki Aalto, Founder and Executive Vice President of Delfoi (Finland), Dmitry Kapishnikov, General Director of KUKA Robotics , Denis Stepanov, General Director of SICK Russia, Alexey Korablev, President of the Concern R-Pro.
Further, within the framework of the forum, a number of breakout discussions were held, which were devoted to robotization in mechanical engineering, mobile and collaborative robotics, training problems in the field of robotics, as well as digital twins and offline programming of robots. At the end of the first day of the forum in the Sheremetev Palace – the Museum of Music in the fountain house, an evening musical program “Petersburg rhythms of robotization” took place. The participants of the program set off on a musical journey through the halls of the Sheremetev Palace and heard Composition No. 3 from the cycle of piano pieces by Sergei Rachmaninov “Six Musical Moments” in live performance, which was accompanied by a robotic show.
The second day of the Forum began with a roundtable meeting “Productivity Leaders” and was devoted to the low productivity of Russian enterprises and a high proportion of manual labor, as well as identifying the reasons why, in terms of robotization density and the level of development of digital infrastructure of enterprises, Russia is significantly inferior to countries with developed economies. The second half of the day delighted the participants with topics about robotization in power engineering, energy and the oil and gas sector, in the production of food, pharmaceuticals and everyday goods, in logistics, and they could also hear about robots for promotion, cinema and high art. At the end of the event, the participants were welcomed by a buffet dedicated to the closing of the Russian Robotics Week 2021.
Forum participants showed high interest in stands and speeches, and also expressed their suggestions and recommendations, which would be interesting to hear in the next weeks of robotization. Also on September 24, within the framework of the Russian Robotics Week and the NEVA 2021 Exhibition, a meeting of the Scientific and Technical Council of the Cluster Creonomyca and OJSC United Shipbuilding Corporation on robotization of the shipbuilding industry was held. The Chairman of the Board of the Cluster A. Korablev presented a report on the prospects for the introduction of robotization and digitalization in shipbuilding.