On 27 May, the INTEKHROS group opened its laboratory at Voronezh State University. The laboratory will serve for educational and practical purposes in the field of mechatronics and robotics. The opening ceremony was attended by the deputy chairman of the Government of the Voronezh Region, Artem Verkhovtsev, the head of the Department of Education, Science, and Youth Policy of the Voronezh Region, Lyubov Kulakova, director general of the INTEKHROS group, Sergey Konovalyuk, the VSU rector, Dmitry Endovitsky, and the dean of the Faculty of Applied Mathematics, Informatics, and Mechanics, Alexander Shashkin.
It is planned that the company and our university will run joint education programmes to train highly qualified and knowledgeable specialists in the most advanced fields: machine building and information technologies.
“The partnership between VSU and INTEKHROS is of great importance as it will help to provide the region with highly-trained specialists,” said Artem Verkhovtsev, the deputy chairman of the Government of the Voronezh Region. He also stressed that the demand for such specialists in the field of machine programming will be increasing.
The director general of the INTEKHROS group, Sergey Konovalyuk, talked about the purpose of the laboratory.
“This laboratory will help us to bring together our expertise in the field of hydraulic drives and the expertise of VSU in the field of modelling and programming. This will enable us to solve the most urgent industrial issues concerning remotely controlling machines in low-accessibility areas, i.e. areas inaccessible to people. And this is just the first step for our long-term partnership in the field of robotics”.
The VSU rector, Dmitry Endovitsky, also pointed out that collaboration between the university and the company will help to achieve a breakthrough in such a high-tech area as robotics.
“We plan to participate together in various competitions held by the Russian Science Foundation and Federal Target Programmes and complete a number of tasks to develop high-tech production projects within the framework of these competitions. Our industrial partner is ready to provide teaching assistance as well as to solve the problem of training specialists for high-tech industries and developing new competencies that will be in high demand on the labour market.”
“All classical universities have always had the most advanced equipment and breakthrough technologies. Thanks to such unique projects, a lot of schoolchildren get extremely interested in modern technologies and robotics” said Lyubov Kulakova, the head of the Department of Education, Science, and Youth Policy of the Voronezh Region.
The laboratory was opened at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics, Informatics, and Mechanics, which has recently introduced a new education programme “Mechatronics and Robotics”.
The dean of the faculty, Alexander Shashkin, believes that the laboratory will consolidate the most advanced research projects implemented at the university.
VSU’s students now have an opportunity to work with the robotic tool ROIN whose functions are identical to those of the robotic tools designed for atomic, steel, construction, and railway industries.
The only difference of the laboratory tool from its industrial counterpart is the speed limit set by the developers for safety reasons. The robot manipulator arm installed at VSU has 6 degrees of freedom and an infinite 360-degree rotation mechanism on the end joint. This means that the robotic arm has 14 manipulation vectors. The rotation mechanism can be equipped with various grippers and electric tools. Despite being quite small, ROIN has the maximum load capacity of 150 kg.
