Impact of Knowledge Exchange in Cross Regional Interdisciplinary Collaboration Within a Robotic Development Project

Abstract

Co-design and co-creation of robotic systems and supporting automated solutions for industrial applications have seen a rapid increase in development efforts in recent years. Research and development activities within collaborative and industrial robotic projects alongside implementations of technical solutions have also shown significant gains in offering small, medium and some large enterprises enough cost benefit justification and improved understanding of technical requirements to adopt them in the 'servitisation' of manufacturing and assembly operations. This paper reports findings related to the impact of generating and exchanging technical knowledge within a large multimillion euros project in France-England Channel region over a running duration of over 5 years and the mutual benefits it had on the research institutes, industrial partners and collaborative network established from the project. The results indicated an increase in knowledge acquisition and exchange amongst individuals that can be used to gain significant advantages and a steppingstone in improving new product development activities, speed to market, as well as enhancing methods to establish long term collaborative efforts within industry-academia and improve innovation output.