Robots are one of the recent stages of technological progress. Variety of robots being used by businesses to improve productivity has increased rapidly in recent years. And there is no reason to believe that this pace of robotization will start to decrease any time soon. With the rising popularity of machines and software, several governments are investing a huge sum into their research and development work.
Here are several government-driven robotics R&D programs.
China
Made in China, 2025, is an initiative that sets to develop China’s industrial capability. The 10-year, extensive strategy focuses heavily on intelligent manufacturing in 10 strategic sectors and has the goal of attaining China’s position as a worldwide powerhouse in high-tech industries like robotics, aviation, and new energy vehicles like electric and biogas. The Robot Industry Development Plan sets out the goals for China in 2020, together with:
• expanding three to five globally competitive robot manufacturers
• creating eight to 10 industrial clusters
• attaining 45% of domestic market share for China’s high-end robots
• Accelerating China’s robot density to 100 robots per 10,000 workers
Japan
The robot-related budget for 2019 has been increased to US$351 million, to make Japan the robot innovation hub in the world. The action plan involves manufacturing sectors and service sectors like healthcare and infrastructure.
South Korea
The Intelligent Robot Development and Supply Promotion Act of Korea is trying to develop the robot industry in Korea as a central industry in Industry4.0.
The third fundamental plan for Intelligent Robots published in 2019 stimulates systematic selection and concentration of promising public and private sectors. Focus areas involve manufacturing businesses, selected service robot areas, next-generation key components, and key robot software.
Europe
Robotics projects funded by Horizon 2020, the European Union´s eighth Framework Programme, represent a wide variety of innovation and research topics – starting from manufacturing, commercial, and healthcare use to consumer, transportation, and agri-food robotics. The main topics of the Work Program 2018-2020 are associated with digitization of industry through robotics, robotics applications in promising new areas, and robotics core technologies like AI and cognition, socially cooperative human-robot interaction, and model-based design and configuration tools, with the overall budget of US$173 million.
Germany
As a part of its High-Tech Strategy, Germany supports the employment of recent digital technologies within industry and administration. The PAiCE (Platforms | Additive Manufacturing | Imaging | Communication | Engineering) program with a funding budget of US$55 million over 5 years emphasizes the event of digital industry platforms moreover as a collaboration between companies using these platforms.
America
The National Robotics Initiative in the US was launched for fundamental robotics R&D supported by the US government. The main objective is to focus on fundamental science, technologies, and integrated systems needed to attain a vision of ubiquitous collaborative robots assisting humans in every aspect of life. Additional robotics funding for application in defence and space is provided through the Department of Defense and also by Mars Exploration Program.
