Skills and Education
Research, industry and academia need education to be relevant and up to date so personnel attain a skillset relevant for I&M robotics. Academic institutions need to stay relevant in order to attract students, and research institutes need to stay industrially relevant in order to attract funding. DIH services in skills and education can help sustain this co-dependency.
RIMA has defined five categories of stakeholders for courses related to I&M robotics:
- Decision makers working at end-user sites.
- Developers and systems integrators – providers of RIMA-relevant technologies.
- People currently working in infrastructure inspection and maintenance hands-on.
- People in training – the upcoming stakeholders in all categories.
- Other interested people – politicians, general public, schoolchildren, etc.
In RIMA the DIH partners are developing eight core courses which span key needs for knowledge related to I&M robotics. The courses are all targeting aspects of I&M robotics and are currently divided into:
- Introduction to I&M robotics
- Financing robotics
- Overview of technologies within I&M robotics
- Innovation management and developing new robotic technology
- Optimizing your I&M robotics
- Working with robotics in I&M jobs
- Upcoming technologies in I&M
- Working with virtual reality (VR) and simulation in I&M
It is recommended that DIHs provide one or more of similar courses to the ones listed above. The courses can be given in a variety of ways including as online videos, seminars, workshops, demonstrations, and class-room lectures. It is recommended to produce videos of the courses to make it easier to “teach the trainers” – i.e., to educate people in giving the courses. Naturally, GDPR needs to be handled for such videos (e.g., it may be enough to only record video and sound from the person giving the course and thus not include video footage of any attendees).
There are also existing courses available today that are relevant for I&M robotics, e.g., available as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). DIHs are encouraged to provide an overview of the courses that are available both within and outside the DIH ecosystem.
Example: An example of a service in this area is “The Teaching Factory” at LMS which is designed to increase collaboration between academia and industry. The industry provides engineering-relevant challenges, and the university with teams of students propose solutions. Dialogue along the way foster healthy idea generation and industry/academic collaboration. The students in the last years of studies are selected on merits, sided by an LMS representative, begin to interface with engineers in the company. The semester is split in 13 weeks with periodic meetings between the students and the company in order to discuss ideas, possible solutions, prototypes and possible final demos. This initiative gives good visibility to students who may have the possibility to get hired and, at the same time, may lead to innovative solutions to technical problems.
