An Educational and Research Cooperation between Brazil and Germany on Industrial Automation Topics

Unibral is a program that supports research and education cooperation actions between German and Brazilian universities. This work in progress paper will describe a new version of such an old experience of Unibral, a project between the Federal University of Amazonas and the University of Stuttgart. This edition started in 2013 and joined two institutes related to the electrical and computer engineering courses. The German side is represented by the Institute of Industrial Automation and Software Engineering (IAS) and the Brazilian side by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Courses. The main topics of the research and technology transfer are related to the new industrial automation issues concerning modularity and flexibility, product automation (focusing on health), and cyber physical systems. The project will evaluate the introduction of new curricular directions and new subjects in both sides, as well as, joint research action that will put together people from both institutions. This paper will describe the experiences already done in this work in progress emphasizing the new directions in this project phase. Our goal is to contribute with other universities all over the world wishing to establish similar cooperation actions.