The kick-off meeting of the Erasmus+ project INCOBOTICS took place in Politeknika Txorierri last week. The INCOBOTICS: Ready for Industry 5.0 project (2019-2021) unites four EU partners from France, Italy, Greece and Spain (Basque Country) in the development of innovative didactic materials in cobotics. The integration of cobots (collaborative robots) into the industrial and business sectors of the EU which will work side by side with their human counterparts in workspaces is predicted to grow from 2020.
Future electronics and robotics graduates will be required to work alongside AI data technicians to programme, monitor and analyse the data fed into and coming from cobots and their integrated artificial vision (AV) systems. Skilled programming and monitoring will see cobots safely perform an ever wider range of (interactive) functions in the world of work.
The INCOBOTICS project will create an INCOBOTICS Module with a general visual introduction to Industry 5.0 for all students, presenting current or planned examples from companies in each partner region. It will then cover the main characteristics and functions of cobots and develop structured units of learning in understanding and programming cobots and AV systems. The Project will develop a Best Practice Guide for teachers and trainers and offer “challenges” for students around which to develop competence in cobotics. The Guide will support user staff in the understanding of Challenge Based Learning and how to adapt or develop challenges for students in their cobotics and other courses.
The INCOBOTICS Module and Best Practice Guide will be tested by pilot groups in Spain, France and Italy in 2020-2021, refined and freely available in Sept 2021 for downloading from the project website. The final products will be reviewed and validated by major cobot distributors and industrial representatives from partner countries. Politeknika Txorierri (EUS-ES), ADAMICS (FR), APRO (IT) and IDEC (EL) aim to provide higher education providers with the most innovative, quality and ready to use didactical materials in cobotics which will see student graduates in electronics and robotics better prepared for the emerging 5.0 scenario. The INCOBOTICS Module comes with integrated ECT accreditation guidelines.
All INCOBOTICS outputs will be produced under the Creative Commons License. Project partners actively encourage higher educational organisations and other training entities to use the INCOBOTICS: Ready for Industry 5.0 Module and Guide.
