Toyota Encourages Expansion of Robotics Research in Europe
- Toyota to present its Human Support Robot (HSR) at IROS, the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems conference in Madrid (1 to 5 October)
- Toyota HSR provides an open innovation platform for research, development and field testing in real-world environments
- Through its HSR programme, Toyota is opening up collaboration opportunities to help research organisations and accelerate technological advances and growth
Toyota’s Human Support Robot (HSR) is a tangible demonstration of the company’s commitment to helping create a more inclusive and sustainable society through mobility, giving everyone the chance to “challenge their impossible”.
Next week (1 to 5 October), it will show the HSR to academics and researchers attending IROS, the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, in Madrid. Toyota engineers will also present the HSR research platform in a series of talks.
The HSR is a mobility concept and part of the Toyota Partner Robots family. Its development supports Toyota’s goal of providing freedom of mobility for all and enriching people’s lives through focusing on nursing, healthcare, short-distance transport and home living.
HSR is compact and mobile and has a folding arm which it can use to pick up objects on the floor and retrieve items stored on shelves, performing a number of tasks that can help improve the lives of elderly people, or those with disabilities.
Gerard Killmann, Toyota Motor Europe Vice President R&D, said: “Toyota Motor Europe R&D Robotics makes a significant contribution to Toyota’s global research in specific areas of the science, such as perception. This is thanks to Europe’s advanced capabilities in computer vision. We believe that the HSR can help researchers and help accelerate technological advances in robotics. We are thrilled to be expanding our collaboration with additional European research organisations.”
Through the HSR Developers’ Community, launched in September 2015, Toyota has been making its HSR open innovation platform available to partners throughout the world. Participating organisations don’t have to develop the actual robot, or the software for its basic operations; they are free to focus on developing future ideas and applications by testing their technology and algorithms in a real-world environment. There are already 44 partners in 12 countries using the HSR. In Europe, Toyota is supporting research in five universities, in the UK, Germany, France and The Netherlands.
The HSR has already been adopted as a standard platform for international robot competitions, such as the RoboCup@Home and the World Robot Summit (WRS).
To find out more about the HSR development and Toyota’s other robotics-related project, visit https://www.toyota-global.com/innovation/partner_robot/robot/
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