The competition was held within the national project Production and Automation Facilities and the federal project Developing Industrial Robotics and Automation of Production. Funding was provided by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, while Innopolis University conducted the selection and distributed grants among the winners. The competition was held within the federal program of industrial robotics development with support from the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. 48 universities, organizations, and associations from 24 Russian cities submitted 13 applications to create their robotics centers in 2026. ITMO’s application was ranked second.
ITMO’s Industrial Robotics Development Center will specialize in developing robotic complexes, separate sections for specific operations, as well as entire production lines where several robots collaborate and interact with equipment. Unlike traditional automation, such systems can react to changes in production environment, product range, and technological operations.
Among the center’s priority fields are robotization of CNC machine tools servicing, machine vision for determining part positions, intelligent object grasping and manipulation, automated quality control, coordination of multiple robots, and the creation of flexible robotic production systems that can be reconfigured for new products.
The center will support its client enterprises at every stage of robotization from technological audit and evaluation of economic efficiency to development, testing, and implementation of developed solutions. Moreover, it’s planned that the center will acquire its own testing and experiment infrastructure and educational programs.
“Our goal is to make robotization accessible and cost-effective for Russian productions. It’s important to not just install a robot at a site, but to also teach it to adapt to actual working conditions. We bring together ITMO’s competences in AI, robotics, and digital productions, and are already developing solutions that are truly in demand by the industry. The upcoming center will be a platform where research turns into working technologies,” says Anton Pyrkin, the head of ITMO’s Industrial Robotics Development Center.
Anton Pyrkin. Credit: ITMO University
The new center has a development strategy outlining its plans through 2030. By that time, the center is expected to have formed a team of specialists, develop its own line of technological solutions, and complete complex robotization projects for industrial enterprises.
For ITMO, the creation of the center is an opportunity to expand collaborations with industrial partners in St. Petersburg and other Russian regions, accelerate the transfer of the university’s solutions to the real economy sector, and increase the density of industrial robotization in accordance with the national objectives.
13 organization secured funding through the competition, including MIPT, ITMO University, Platov South-Russian State Polytechnic University (NPI), Far Eastern Federal University, Grozny State Oil Technical University, Skoltech, Reshetnev Siberian State University of Science and Technology, Kabardino-Balkarian State University, Donetsk National Technical University, AM Service, Uraltechmarket, TOZ-Robotics, and ThermoLazer. The project’s objective is to put Russia among the top 25 countries by the number of industrial robots by 2030; the project involves both producers and consumers of such robots and increases the level of production automation.
