Skynet is waaaay in the future

[Sky Captain]

I think the very signifcant difference between some of the above projects (with the exo-skeleton as an exeption), and the work we do in Scape, is, that we know exactly where we are aiming.

We are making solutions for industrial production lines that are going to be implemented more or less here and now (at least when measuring in industrial terms), whereas I hear a lot of vague ideas of what might be the use for the different technologies being developed.

There's a huge difference between 'scientific' and 'engineering' approaches, and we need to take the engineering approach to satisfy specific commercial needs, whereas scientists often start out in one direction, and then changes that along the way, and see what they end up with

Yes, you are right. Your company is doing specific solutions where science is creating random knowledge.
But that doesn't make science less important.
Your company needs the random and basic knowledge scientist have created several years ago and in future they will use what scientists are finding out now.
That is the way things work. One to mix the dough and one to bake the cake.
And that is why it is good the EU spends money on science.
It is harder to find knowledge than finding something usefull to do with it.

I don't say it is a simple task to build a good bin-picker, but a few hundred scientist have made the way before.

A random bin-picker has to find a part, and figure out how to best grip it. At the same time it has to be aware of the sides of the bin/box and the other parts, to avoid collision. If the part has to be placed in a fixture or similar for further processing, it involves orientation control - the robot must be able to tell what is up and down, and maybe left and right (and sometimes even how it is positioned in a 6-dimensional space - I cannot even begin to understand what the developers are talking about, here  ), and the figure out how to turn it, before dropping it in the designated place.

By the way, six dimensions are not to hard to understand.
You just have the position x, y and z for up/down, left/right, forward/backward of the tool and than you have pitch, roll and heading for the way the tool is pointing.
You can imagin it like a plane.

3 dimensions for the position and 3 others for the way it is at this position.

[Doomsdave]

I work with vision systems and robots much like this where I work as well.  The problem with these in general is that it's still cheaper to manufacture in the 3rd world with inexpensive human laborers. 

[Bako]

...and aerospace industries (I'm not allowed to reveal them, sorry).

So long as it's not the Union Aerospace Corporation it should be fine .