Fraunhofer IPA – one of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s largest institutes – was founded in 1959 and employs nearly 1000 workers. The focus of our research and development work is on organizational and technological issues related to the manufacturing industry. We develop, test and implement methods, components and devices right up to entire machines and production lines. Fraunhofer IPA’s 15 specialist departments cover the entire field of manufacturing engineering. They are coordinated by six business units and work on an interdisciplinary basis with industrial enterprises from the following sectors: automotive, machinery & equipment, electronics & microsystems, energy, medical engineering & biotechnology, and the process industry.
The department “Robot and Assistive Systems” develops robotic systems and their key components for various application areas and has been active in this field for more than 40 years. We specifically see it as our goal to support companies by transferring robot technologies and applications into new products and solutions: from production and logistics to public environments, care facilities and private homes.
The Domestic and Personal Robotics group is developing robots supporting elderly persons at home (see e.g. the Care-O-bot development series) as well as specialist robotic solutions to support staff in elderly care homes or hospitals (e.g. an intelligent care cart, service assistant, robotic lifter). Our expertise comprises robot hardware development as well as all relevant software components, e.g. for environment perception or object manipulation. Our advanced navigation software is already being used several times in industry. Due to their modular setup we are able adapt these technologies and our robots to any customer-specific needs.