FECYT supports first meeting on robotics between communities of Spanish scientists in Denmark and Germany

Last March 11th, the University of Copenhagen (ITU) hosted the meeting 'Meet the scientist', organized by the Society of Spanish Scientists in Denmark (CED-SFD). Supported by FECYT, the meeting was attended not only by scientists and engineers from the Danish University itself, but also by a representative of the Association of Spanish scientists in Germany (CERFA).

The event, presented and moderated by the president of CED, Dario Vazquez, had a clear objective: to show some of the latest developments in robotics that take place in Denmark and Germany with Spanish participation. First of all, Vazquez presented the work of CED-SFD in the last months and he stressed also the importance of interdisciplinary work for the development of science and technology. Subsequently, the scientific coordinator of FECYT at the Embassy of Spain in Berlin, Dr. Guillermo Orts, recalled the importance of international cooperation in the global enterprise of science, and pointed out the high quality of Spanish scientists, who contribute to excellent science.

Afterwards, Andrés Faina, a researcher at the ITU and member of CED-SFD, explained what are the basic modules to create a robot and the algorithms that enable to control them, in many cases models which are inspired by nature. Later on, the ITU Associate Professor Støy Kasper, presented the work carried out in his research group on artificial life sustained by a reactive liquid handling robot. The last speaker was Dr. Jose de Gea from the German Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and member of CERFA, who presented several prototypes of robots developed at this center, from off-road vehicles for space exploration developed in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), until humanoids for domestic service.

The event ended with a demonstration by Andrés Faina and Kasper Støy of a robot made in the laboratories of the ITU, but above all, questions from the audience, who confessed to be fascinated by the robots presented during this event.