Opening of our ABC Robotics Center

Yesterday, the inauguration of the Antal Bejczy Center for Intelligent Robotics was held at Óbuda University in the presence of the majority of Hungary's robotics folks. Medical robotics, including teleoperation and control for surgical systems and robotic training platforms are among the key research areas. Tony Bejczy, research lead at NASA JPL, founder of the IEEE RAS is the honorary president of the Advisory Board that includes senior robotics people from all around the globe.

"The ABC Center for Intelligent Robotics is devoted to promote the scientific and technological advancement of robotics, primarily for service applications. It was created as a reply to the rising demand of integrated education and application-oriented development in robotics. It is an independent platform within the Óbuda University, extensively relying on a national and international network of key partner institutions and companies in Europe and North America, predominantly. It acts as a research center of excellence, and has three major focuses for operation: 

• Cutting edge development in the fundamentals of robotics—including hardware and software; mechatronics, control and application. 
• Bridging the development projects to particular applications, tapping into the scientific results to solve the emerging issues of modern society. 
• Disseminating current knowledge about robotics both in structured form via university courses and to the wider public.  

We are willing to become a competence center for R&D in service robotics, including medical, social and cloud robotics. Inherently, the Center is involved with technological development, focusing on novel instruments, robot platforms and sensors, with adequate control structures and user interfaces.   The Center is aiming to gain experience in manufacturing engineering, system testing, validation and commercialization. Technically, it provides “Software as Service (SaaS)”, “Platform as Service (PaaS)” and eventually “Infrastructure as Service (IaaS)” to other university units and external contractors. The key to its success is the ability to bring together mechatronics, software engineering and usability research to create the accessible robot technology of tomorrow. Key partners of the Center: 

	Stanford University, Robotics Research Group (Kalifornia, USA)
	“POLITEHNICA” University of Timişoara, Faculty of Automation and Computer Science (Timisoara, Romania)
	Austrian Center for Medical Innovation and Technology (ACMIT, Wiener Neustadt, Austria)
	Taiwan National University, NTUEE Intelligent Robotics and Automation Lab (Taipei, Tajvan)
	Queens University, PERK Lab (Kingston, Kanada)
	TÜV Rheinland (Köln, Germany)
	MTA SzTAKI Cognitive Informatics Group (Budapest)