Proximity in Industry-Academia Collaborations: The Case of the ECHORD Project

In this contribution the authors examine robotics research itself. We look at the data which the European funded ECHORD project (European Clearing House for Open Robotics Development) generated. The project began in January 2009 with the ambitious goal of bringing together European robotics manufacturers with the European research institutions and it ended in 2013. We will especially look at the effects of physical, geographical distance between partners in each of the sub-projects which are called experiments in the ECHORD terminology. We take dissemination activities and reporting outcomes as the measures of performance. Judging from the statistics we will show that collaborations across country borders show positive outcomes with regard to project outcomes. This shows that European robotics projects do indeed perform well if several partners from more than one European country are involved. 1