Finland aims for pole position in autonomous systems

1 min read

The global market for autonomous systems is growing quickly: an estimated €76 billion will be spent on robotics by 2025. To keep pace with this development, Finland is launching Research Alliance for Autonomous Systems (RAAS), an ecosystem for autonomous systems.

The aim is for RAAS to grow into one of the world’s leading development environments. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland has given a Government grant for the full launch of the innovation ecosystem.

The RAAS ecosystem is bringing key research organisations and other actors together for the development of new, cross-sector solutions. The goals are expediting the development of systems with a high level of automation and rejuvenating innovation activities in the field.

“There are technical, operational issues and business challenges to overcome in the development of autonomous systems, but we also need to resolve a number of questions related to legislation, regulations and social acceptance. An innovation ecosystem like RAAS will let us tackle broad, systemic challenges”, said RAAS Coordinator Hannu Karvonen.

The ecosystem’s focus areas will include land transport, marine and port operations, mobile machinery and drones. These application areas share many features in common and make use of the same technologies. The idea is that cooperation will generate synergy benefits and support mutual learning between industries.

RAAS welcomes companies to talk about the challenges to development in this field and find the right paths, professionals and partners to expedite the creation of new hit products and services.

The innovation ecosystem will also be used to chart the current state of expertise in Finland and identify development areas where the help of international partners will be required.