Aleksey Pesoshin: Industrial robotics is of a strategic character under conditions of understaffing

On 3 October the Russian Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Maksim Oreshkin, Russian Minister of Industry and Trade Anton Alikhanov and the Minister of Higher Education and Science of the country Valeriy Falkov, who came on working trip to Tatarstan, accompanied by the regional Prime Minister Aleksey Pesoshin came to Innopolis which these days hosts the international forum Digital Innopolis Days and Innopolis AI Conference focused on cases in AI, robotics and innovations in education and training specialists.

Upon its arrival to the IT-town the delegation visited the University of Innopolis where regional Deputy Prime Minister Roman Shaykhutdinov told about the history of the development of the innovative center and the development of the new city environment and the infrastructure of the science town He also informed about development of new through technologies and solutions, the current work of the University of Innopolis and implementation of the advanced engineering school project. 

Poman Shaykhutdinov informed his guests that 338 companies work successfully at the Special Economic Zone of Innopolis with the total amount of investments having exceeded 174.1bn rubles and having created 9 800 jobs. 

Then the guest went by an unmanned taxi to the plenary session of the forum, which discussed prospects of robotics of Russia. Speaking at the meeting, Aleksey Pesoshin emphasized that  today the issue of understaffing is a burning one in the industry of the country and industrial robotics is of a strategic character under these conditions. “The Leadership of the country has set forth the task in increasing the number of robots at enterprises. At the same time the cost of produce should not suffer and the employment should be preserved. It is a rather complex work,” he said. 

Aleksey Pesoshin also informed that last year the GRP of the republic made 4 trillion 320bn rubles and the target for this year is to reach 5 trillion rubles. 

In his turn Maksim Oreshkin emphasized that automatization will become only more beneficial as there is a huge support package both for the robot manufactures and their implementation. 

Anton Alikhanov said that currently there are 19 industrial robots per every 10 thousand workers and the Russian President gave an errand to introduce 85 thousand robots by 2030. So it is necessary to increase domestic manufacture of robots and change the attitude of heads of enterprises to this issues, he said.

Speaking about training of specialists, Valeriy Falkov said “It is important to organize work of universities in such a way that they are not lagging behind the requirements of employers. Taking into account today’s pace of technological development the university must be able to train specialists both for the current format of the industry and for that which does not exist yet.” 

Later the same day the guests visited the high tech park InnoPark and took part in a meeting of Russian robotics market participants, namely industrial robots manufacturers and integrators.

Speaking at the meeting, Aleksey Pesoshin stressed that currently the republic has its own robot manufacturers and a well-developed educational infrastructure in robotics. “It is important to know demand of industrial enterprises. So it is also important to ensure continuous interaction between producers and state corporations and together with large enterprises envisage implementation of robots and their procurement in strategic documents of organizations,” he stated.