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robohub 00104.txt

#Governmental funding of strategic robotic projects Many governments have determined that robotics will play a significant role in contributing to their economy and have set up projects to fund bottlenecks to speed up the process. Japan the EU France the UK and to a lesser extent the US are all doing this. Sebastian Cagnon a French behavior architect at Aldebaran Robotics who blogs at About Robots recapped the following governmental programs. Â I am excerpting and editing with his permission. These last few months have seen so many announcements from countries investing in robotics with head spinning numbers it gave me the idea to sum it all up in this post. The wave started with the EU announcing a huge â#2. 8 billionâ investment program for the next 7 years. The EU Commission itself is investing â#700m and the rest is coming from the industry. The goal is to invest in every robotics sector from industrial robots to domestic from the fields to space etcanother two announcements came from Japan: the announcement of Pepper by Softbank and Aldebaran (although not really a governmental funding project) and the Japanese government announcement that the future of Japan would depend on robots. Shinzo Abe Prime minister of Japan announced on June 19th funding to make a obot revolution. You can see Sebastian at work with Pepper in the article's news photo. The fundingâ sets up a task force to further develop Japan robot manufacturers and help them increase their revenues to $24 billion by 2020. In addition Abe calls for a Robotics Olympics to be held at the same time as the 2020 Olympics being held in Japan. Then came The british government on July 1st announcing RAS 2020. You canâ see hereâ that they went big with the numbers with $257m of investment planned for robotics! Their program focus is to create the conditions for a thriving robotics industry through a series of stimulating and support initiatives. Next in line are The french. When we are not in strike we make robots too! Our French Ministerâ Arnaud Montebourg announced the creation of a private fundâ with â#80m ($108m) to invest in companies. The business minded robolutioner Bruno Bonnell is piloting the project. Â Robolution Capitalâ plans to invest in companies and start-ups even to front the early stages of development. Before this rush of announcements theâ US had announced in 2011 $500mâ invested in automation robots as part of a $2. 2 billion Advanced Manufacturing Initiative andâ Korea went for $316m in 2012! But Korea just announced a new $2. 7 billion plan in response to the American Japanese and EU plans. Their new plan is to help existing robotics businesses increase their sales as well as investing in disaster recover and search and rescue robots and eldercare robots. We are way past the MULTI-BILLION dollars in investments by now. Thanks Sebastian. Â s

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