Industry-academia collaborations in robotics: Comparing Asia, Europe and North-America

In this contribution, we look at technology transfer in robotics. Generally, there is a delay between a science-push and a market-pull. In order of finding means to decrease this lag, we are going to look at the causes of this effect and at the means for improving technology transfer. For this purpose, we use a variety of data sources which shed light on the current situation in Asia, Europe and North-America. First, we will examine the technology-readiness level (TRL) scale which can be used as a means of measuring market readiness of innovative technology. After this we will look at what means experts find useful for technology transfer. Finally, we investigate academia-industry collaboration as one tool to increase technology transfer. We demonstrate a strong collaboration between industry and academia in North America which we see as a response to the lower numbers of robots deployed in the industry in North America compared to Asia and Europe. This is an on-going trend which occurs in parallel to a global trend in growing numbers of robots in use.