As the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics CTU offers a wide range of topics related to digitization, industry innovations, robotics, international projects of cooperation and other, it is frequently visited by (not only) prominent foreign guests. On Thursday, November 10, we were able to welcome Emilia Stojmenova Duh, minister for digitization of the Republic of Slovenia, whose current agenda and professional experience are very much in line with the Institute’s activities.
The Scientific Director of the institute prof. Vladimír Mařík introduced the current strategic goals and international cooperation of the institute: „Madame Minister is a computer science graduate, and apart from her academic career she was the Executive Director of the Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) Slovenia. I am pleased we were also able to introduce a few concrete examples of what we have in common – either in terms of our current involvements in a few DIH networks that will be followed by eDIH from next year as well as in terms of using Slovenian technologies in our testbed. This creates also a solid base for the identification of opportunities for future Czech-Slovenian research collaboration and best practice sharing.“
Prof. Olga Štěpánková, Head of Department of Biomedical Engineering and Assistive Technology, presented her current research projects in biomedicine and also active cooperation with the Slovenian project partners, which has been conducted since the beginning of the nineties.
Following the agenda of the visit, there was a tour through the RICAIP Testbed for Industry 4.0 guided by Petr Kolář, Deputy Head of the Department of Industrial Production and Automation. A presentation of a few robotic demonstrators was made by our female junior researchers. Elizaveta Isianova and Marina Ionova introduced their latest work in the area of human-robot collaboration for applications in interactive and assistive assembly. Some of the use cases have newly integrated 5G data communication with an edge server, such as a robotic tap system. Whereas some of them also use computer vision and artificial intelligence algorithms, such as a hand guide controller for accurate object locations or a robot playing checkers. In the Laboratory of robotics and machine tools, robotic working cells for lased-based additive processes and for robotic machining and their digital twins have been presented. Flexible development support of SMEs for their development and testing within existing eDIH had been discussed.
Minister Stojmenova Duh is strongly committed to increasing the number of young people studying engineering – especially women – who will later remain active in their sectors and dare to take up leadership positions in science and Engineering. The minister was also the first President of IEEE’s „Women in Engineering Slovenia“.
