Chairman's Summary April
12, 2000 |
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The Sixth Micromachine Summit was held in Hiroshima, Japan during
April 10-12, 2000 with 54 delegates from 15 countries/regions and special guest from NEXUS/EC
and 39 observers of which 13 from the overseas. The topics we discussed and exchanged our views and opinions on were more
general issues to promote micromachine technologies, which we started to
discuss at the first Summit in Kyoto five years ago. In session “Country/region review”, we learned each other’s status of micromachine
development.It seemed that the activities in the delegations were strengthened
ever before with new horizontal expansion. In session“Government policy”, we discussed issues, i.e. government role
in international collaboration and industrial view on this issue.In this
technologically infant area, governments may have an important role to
accelerate further progress of micromachine. In session “Education”, we discussed how to collaborate internationally
in order to educate and train students including children to engineers
advanced technologies.Micromachine progress heavily depends on human brain
and skills.This topic should be discussed at the next Summit. In session “Standardization”, the discussion was focused on what items
or areas were targeted at this moment.Measurement method seems to have
priority. In session “Technology transfer” and “Industrial infrastructure”, we exchanged
the experience among the participants, who are actively engaging in the
variety of programs. In session “Exploiting of application”, we exchanged various topics, such
as fluidics, new devices, efforts to seek for applications. In session “Future outlook”, we looked at the future scenario of micromachine.
We have a look at future of micromachine in fluidics and examined the scenario
of future development.Our conclusion is that “we have a bigopportunity to fulfill human needs and should move forward with confidence”. The World Micromachine Summit has a vital forum to exchange views and opinions by high-level people involved among countries/regions, which take different approaches.The chief delegates meeting has thought that the continuing discussion would be necessary and decided we should meet again next year in Germany in Spring and further the 8th Summit in Benelux in 2002. |
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Chief Delegate, Japan |