350 robotics industry visionaries at Innorobo 2015

Innorobo 2015 brought together industrial decision-makers, scholars renowned worldwide for their research work, service company executives, top-ranking institutional representatives from robotics initiatives on three continents and pioneers and entrepreneurs from all around the globe. Though holding the 2015 event in early July resulted in fewer general public visitors (10,000 visitors compared to 15,000 in 2014). This date enabled eminent representatives from South Korea, Japan, Russia, Europe (Denmark, Finland, the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and others) and the United States to come together to learn, debate and build a common vision of how our society will be transformed by these disruptive technologies. Collectively, 60% of the world’s robotics market was on hand at the event and today Innoecho is in China (at CIROS) to attract representatives from this country to the next edition of Innorobo, scheduled for May/June 2016.

“This year, we had 200 exhibitors from 20 countries, meaning the event grew by 30% compared to 2014. This is a concrete illustration of how this market has expanded, with industrial robotics up 12% and personal service robotics up 28% in 2014,” stated Catherine Simon, CEO, Innoecho. “Exhibitors showed a great many innovations for the first time in France or in Europe, proving how dynamic this industry is.”

Innorobo focuses on the overall transformation that robotics is bringing about. The idea is to create a number of market opportunities for exhibitors, who can thus discover ways to diversify their technologies, discuss the needs and constraints of various sectors with decision makers and take home high-potential contacts and leads to help their business grow. For visitors, the Innorobo exhibition shows how robotics technology can offer new product innovations, help their companies to become more competitive and grow, improve work quality and enhance employee working conditions.

Innorobo gives prominence to start-ups, as they bring the innovations destined to upend traditional markets and need industrial partners and funding providers to deliver on their promise.

Beyond business opportunities, robotics technologies will also result in disruptive solutions for the major challenges our world is facing, without borders, all around the globe. Innorobo thus endeavors to bring in visionary experts as speakers, to invite the audience to take part in workshops on the potential social transformations this technological progress holds in store, and to create the opportunity for informal meetings that will lead to collaboration and discussions on a longer-term vision.

Thus, for example, leading representatives from the world’s foremost national federations and robotics clusters in attendance at Innorobo presented analyses of their strengths and weaknesses in robotics. A workshop chaired by Ms. Mady Delvaux Stehres, President of the European Parliament’s Committee on Ethics in Robotics, generated a discussion on the principle of human dignity, which could serve as a basis for norms and standards for personal assistance robots.

In 2015, Innorobo gathered leading personalities in robotics, the business world and the institutional sphere from more than 20 countries at a veritable 'G20' on the social challenges that robotics can help to address, as well as the questions that disruptive technologies give rise to.