Toyota expanding Robotics Research in Europe
- The Toyota Human Support Robot (HSR) provides researchers with an open innovation platform for research, development and field testing in a real environment
- Through the Developer’s Community, Toyota is opening collaboration to research organizations to accelerate technological advances and growth thanks to the HSR
- Next week, Toyota will present its HSR at the IROS (2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems) in Madrid from October 1st-5th
Brussels, Belgium - September 24, 2018 - Toyota believes that mobility goes beyond cars. At Toyota, freedom of mobility is important, whether you are 1 or 100 years old. In pursuing its vision of “Mobility for All”, Toyota is committed to support the creation of a more inclusive and more sustainable society through mobility in which everyone can challenge their impossible.
Next week Toyota will show its Human Support Robot (HSR) to the academic and researchers’ community in Europe at IROS in Madrid from October 1st-5th. Toyota Engineers will also present the HSR research platform in a series of talks.
The HSR, one of Toyota’s mobility concepts developed within our goal to provide freedom of mobility for all, is part of the Toyota Partner Robots family. It reflects our commitment to enriching lives of Communities with a focus on nursing and healthcare, short-distance transport and home-living.
As a compact mobile manipulator with a folding arm, it can pick up objects up off the floor and retrieve objects from shelves. It performs a variety of other tasks to improve the quality of life of elderly people or people with disabilities.
Toyota Motor Europe (TME) R&D Robotics significantly contributes to Toyota’s global research in specific areas of robotics such as perception thanks to Europe’s advanced capabilities in computer vision. We believe that HSR brings a real contribution to researchers and can help accelerate technological advancements in robotics. We are thrilled to expand our collaborations with additional European research organisations.
Through the HSR Developer’s Community launched in September 2015, Toyota has been offering its HSR open innovation platform to partners throughout the world. Participating research organizations do not need to develop the actual robot nor the software for the robot’s basic operations. They can focus on developing future ideas and applications by testing their technology and algorithms in a real environment with ease. There are already 44 partners in 12 countries using the HSR. In Europe, TME is also supporting 5 research universities located in Germany, UK, 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/
For applications to join the HSR Developers’ Community, please contact xr-hsr-info@mail.toyota.co.jp or visit Toyota in IROS at Booth 58.
* List of research universities in Europe:
| Country | University | Topic[SM(1] |
1 | The Netherlands | Eindhoven University of Technology | Health-care oriented service robots |
2 | Germany | University of Bremen | Cognitive robot for human support |
3 | Germany | Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences | Domestic service robots |
4 | UK | University of Oxford | Autonomous service robots |
5 | France | University of Technology of Belfort-Montbeliard | Assisted living environments with service robots |