Osaka University and Komatsu Ltd. started a joint research project in 2006 as an industry-academia collaboration activity, and Komatsu established a cooperative research center on Osaka University campus in 2015. The center has conducted joint research to solve the problems of companies as well as independent research on remote and autonomous construction machinery. Since 2017, it has been working on “HENNA” construction equipment (“HENNA” in Japanese means “novel and innovative with unconventional thinking”) as a new research idea that combines the academic nature of Osaka University with the corporate nature of Komatsu. These research initiatives and the concept of the Cooperative Research Center (2017–present) are presented here.

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