Background
BSH Hausgeräte GmbH is a global leader in the home appliance industry and the leading home appliance manufacturer in Europe, represented in about 50 countries.
The company’s brand portfolio includes eleven well-known appliance brands like Bosch, Siemens, Gaggenau and Neff as well as the ecosystem brand Home Connect and service brands like Kitchen Stories.
The product portfolio ranges from large home appliances – such as cooktops, ovens, extractor hoods, dishwashers, washers, dryers, fridges, and freezers – to small home appliances, such as vacuum cleaners, espresso machines as well as small kitchen appliances.
BSH is a Bosch Group company.
Challenge
BSH aspires to continuously improve quality of life at home and make people smile. However, there are household tasks that are annoying and tedious. Many of these issues are already addressed by specialized appliances. However, grasping is one of the main operations that still needs to be performed by a human operator. BSH is therefore looking for innovators and experts who have innovative solutions on how to design a low-cost robotic grasper.
The grasper does not need to be fully actuated nor similar to a human hand. We are looking for a robust and low cost manipulator that can fulfill the following tasks in a household environment:
- Grasp glassware (e.g. when operating a dishwasher)
- Grasp cloths (e.g. when operating a washing machine or dryer)
- Grasp toys (e.g. when tidying up a room)
What's in it for you?
A successful collaboration could mean forming a partnership/joint venture to co-develop and co-launch the idea to market.
This is a global challenge and BSH is willing to collaborate with individuals/freelancers and other industry participants/universities.
Please describe your approach detailled enough so that we can assess if we should start further discussions. However, please keep the protection of your work results and your efforts in mind. Therefore, please don’t provide confidential information at this stage.
Especially, please first file a patent application in your name before you provide us with any information, which you believe to comprise an invention. Only proceed if you are fine with that. Everything we receive at this stage, we will consider to be non-confidential.
If we see potential for a further collaboration, we will approach you and enter into a confidentiality agreement with you so that your information is protected in the course of the further disucssions.
Please be aware that we might have had the same idea as you and are already working on a similar approach.