The research project on robotics, industrial informatics, and optimization algorithms at CTU aims to contribute significantly to transforming the Czech industry and international competitiveness. The project will involve more than 180 top researchers, including scientists from FIT CTU. ROBOPROX is the only project supported under the Johannes Amos Comenius Operational Programme (OP JAK) call that focuses on research in robotics and industrial informatics. The project was selected among 26 elite projects that the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, together with the European Commission, will support as part of the OP JAK call.
The five-year project has very ambitious plans and aims to help the Czech and European economies, among other things, facilitate the transition to flexible, environmentally friendly and competitive production. ROBOPROX will focus on breakthrough research and development in robotics and advanced industrial manufacturing using flexible deployment of robots with a high degree of autonomy, safe cooperation with humans, control and optimization of manufacturing processes and computational methods for manufacturing and materials engineering. It will enable the development of complex, modular and advanced solutions that can flexibly respond to changing customer requirements while respecting increasing environmental constraints.
As part of the project, experts from FIT CTU will research the complexity of specific production problems on a theoretical level so that the resulting proposed solution can be effectively and smoothly applied in practice. Many of these problems can be interpreted for theoretical research using graph theory, which will help bring new insights and open up new solution possibilities. For a comprehensive research outcome, researchers will also seek solutions to these problems using methods from parameterized complexity, where the difficulty of the resulting solution application will be an important aspect.
“The opportunity to participate in such an important research project is a great challenge for us and offers a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary cooperation. Thanks to our theoretical research, we can participate in developing new methods for industrial production,” said doc. RNDr. Dušan Knop, Ph.D., from the Department of Theoretical Computer Science at FIT CTU, added: “We are already looking forward to seeing what progressive solutions the project will bring.”
“ROBOPROX allows us to work on challenging problems of modern computer science that require interdisciplinary cooperation involving a new generation of young researchers and engineers taught at CTU and elsewhere. ROBOPROX will bring new scientific ideas and people who will eventually turn these ideas into reality,” said prof. Christoph Kirsch, the head of the Programming Research Laboratory at FIT CTU.
For five years, the project will involve the best researchers from six parts of CTU in Prague, BUT in Brno, VSB‑TUO in Ostrava, and UWB in Pilsen. The researchers will work on topics in robotics and advanced industrial production.
