30 years of robotics research: TU Ilmenau opens robot exhibition

The TU Ilmenau has opened an exhibition of robots from 30 years of robotics research. On display are ten automated helpers for retail, care, rehabilitation and the home, which were developed in the Department of Neuroinformatics and Cognitive Robotics. The interactive "Robo Expo" can be visited from Monday to Friday between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. at TU Ilmenau, Zusebau, 2nd floor, corridor D, Helmholtzplatz 5.

Tweety, Hera, Ringo and Konrad are four of the "residents" of the unusual shared apartment at the TU Ilmenau. In the recently opened Robo Expo, interested visitors can get to know robots from previous and current research projects. In the interactive exhibition, they can first get an overview via text panels and then use pointing gestures to call up information about the exhibits on two large monitors. The video material provides them with an hour of interesting facts about the robots and robotics research at TU Ilmenau in German or English - as well as some fun facts.

Robo Expo was initiated by the head of the Group of Neuroinformatics and Cognitive Robotics labs , Prof. Horst-Michael Groß. Since 1994, he and his team have been developing automated helpers for retail, care, rehabilitation and the home, most of which are designed by the company MetraLabs GmbH from Ilmenau. Prof. Groß has created the interactive robot exhibition to ensure that these technological witnesses are not forgotten after the end of the project: "Robots that were once state-of-the-art are ageing in robotics laboratories all’over the world: The simplest basic skills no longer work, complex demos certainly don’t, the batteries discharge or displays no longer turn on. The robots are then often relegated to storage rooms where they are forgotten. We want to prevent this with this exhibition."

The exhibition also serves as a showroom for the Thuringian Center for Systems and Robotics , a joint institution of Thuringian universities and research institutes based at TU Ilmenau. Interested parties or potential users can find out about the robotic systems here.