With the support of the EU4DigitalSME project that is co-financed by the European Union and the Federal Republic of Germany (BMZ), and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, a visit was organised for representatives of digital innovation hubs (DIHs) to one of the most important robotics events, the European Robotics Forum (ERF) that this year took place in the Danish Odense in the period from March 14 to 16, 2023.  

The delegation included representatives from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of Banja Luka on behalf of the digital innovation hub ”IDEMO”, research and technology organisation FabLab Sarajevo on behalf of the digital innovation hub ”Digital Storm” and two public institutes on behalf of the digital innovation hub ”its4Health”, namely the Institute for Standardisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Institute of Metrology of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The event itself was declared the largest so far by the organisers and gathered around 1000 participants. It offered an insight in the application of robotics in different spheres of life. In addition to a large number of companies, the event also included representatives of EU-funded projects, such as DIH² and DIH-Hero, which was an opportunity for the representatives of digital innovation hubs from Bosnia and Herzegovina to establish contacts for the purpose of a potential future cooperation.  

The feedback from the participants that participated in the visit was extremely positive, such as the feedback from a representative of the Institute of Metrology, who says that ”the application of robots in medicine, assessment of harmonisation (medicine robots + artificial intelligence) of the national legislation with the EU legislation, introduction of artificial intelligence in the legislative framework of the EU, inspection of wind farms using drones, delivery of medical diagnoses using autonomous robots and supervised machine learning in medicine are only some of the areas in which robotics is increasingly present.”

A representative of the Electrical Engineering Faculty of Banja Luka also had extremely positive impressions: ”For a person dealing with robotics, like me, the visit to the European Robotics Forum ERF2023 constitutes a very important and valuable experience. Meeting people who present ideas and solutions for the application of robotics in different fields is the wish and inspiration for everyone who strives to achieve similar results in robotics. ERF2023 is an event that provides huge opportunities, such as exchange of ideas, becoming acquainted with and considering potential future cooperation, acquisition of new knowledge and skills, and acquiring information about the current situation and development trends in robotics globally.”

Next year, ERF 2024 will be held in Rimini (Italy) and everyone is eager to see how robotics will develop over the next year.

The project Innovation and Digitalisation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Bosnia and Herzegovina/EU4DigitalSME is co-financed by the European Union and the Federal Republic of Germany. It aims to ensure a favourable environment for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in order to enable them to successfully implement digitalisation and innovation transformations.  

For more information, please visit the website https://eu4digitalsme.ba.

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23/03/2023