Minister for Industries P.K. Kunhalikutty inaugurated the programmable robotics lab of the Amrita University at a function held at the university campus at Amritapuri near here on Wednesday. The lab is reportedly the first of its kind to be set up by a university in India.
It was set up in collaboration with ABB Robotics. Tore Lindstrom, head of robotics business at ABB and Kurien Issac, from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology also attended the function.
A statement from the university said that with the projections that India is expected to become the second largest manufacturing country in the next five years, Indian industry is leveraging cutting-edge automation technologies to be globally competitive.
In this backdrop, there an urgent need to train students with multifaceted skills involved in robotics engineering with a curriculum that focuses on manufacturing and industrial applications to serve the industry need.
The interdisciplinary Robotics and Automation M.Tech. programme was launched in 2014. The two ABB industrial robots, IRB 1600 and IRB 1520 will provide engineering students an opportunity to enter fields in industrial robotics such as manufacturing and automation.