France’s Minister for Industrial Renewal Arnaud Montebourg announced Tuesday at the European Robotics Forum that the government will be injecting 100 Million euros into the Robotics industry in France. Originally covered on the Wall Street Journal, the fund is said to give between 300,000 € and 3 Million € in grants to the robotics industry, which, while mainly encompassing the healthcare and industrial sector, will also include connected objects.
This represents a great step forward for France, as they try to step in front of an industry that the European Commission says will be valued at €100 Billion by 2015.
France has already had some early successes in Robotics as well as connected objects; in Thomson Reuters’ Top 100 Global Innovators report from last year, several French technical research centers and companies were listed, many of which have been accredited with success in the robotics industry.
While I doubt this money will be going to fund the Withing’s of the world, it is nice to see Robotics innovation on the horizon – I’ve found myself more and more impressed with companies that manage to build connected hardware, as it requires not only building great hardware, but building great software – usually smartphone-enabled – that will power/manage this great hardware.