The year 2024 is coming to an end, a year that has undoubtedly been very important for all of us who are part of the euROBIN project. For this reason, before wishing you the very best for 2025, we want to make a recap of how it has been, not only this year 2024 so far, in which we have achieved great things, but also how euROBIN has evolved since it was launched and faces the last stage of the project that will take us until mid 2026.
Thus, on behalf Alin Albu-Schäffer, Project coordinator, Rebecca Schedl-Warpup, Project Deputy coordinator, both from the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics (DLR); and the overall euROBIN project partners, scientist and supporting staff we would like to put forward the following lines. Lines that are, especially dedicated to show our utmost gratitude to the euROBIN always growing community who help us keep building together the future of the EU in the crossroads of robotics and artificial intelligence. Thus, as a brief recap of the project, these first 29 months of our big and challenging project are over and we believe that our result is impressive. Here is a recap of them:
- In March 2024 euROBIN had a big milestone with its participation at the ERF24 in Rimini, where we held several workshops and meetings. Eight partners presented our project with robots at a joint euROBIN booth. We would like to thank all the teams that participated in that event. Further, the demonstrations we saw there left a great impression and made a big impact, with very cool and ambitious robot demonstrations to create a lasting impact, and not only to organise workshops, joint lectures and meetings... Of course, because we are roboticists
- Cascade funding is ongoing: on the one hand, our first 17 beneficiaries of the calls have started work. Welcome and please participate as much as possible in the consortium, enhance it with your experience and benefit from it. On the other hand, the third and last open call was launched on 20 November 2024. The deadline is 19 February 2025. If interested, please, do apply. If you would like to show some love to our call, feel free to use our materials your network to advertise our calls: euROBIN Open Calls. This is the last chance for your best and most capable colleagues to join our network.
- During these months we have made several presentations and workshops of euROBIN at important international events such as ICRA, IROS, ADR Forum, NoEs coordination meetings and more to give momentum to project results. One of those results that shine bright is the executive summary of our euROBIN SRA (Strategic Research Agenda) of euROBIN robotics. You can find the executive summary here. The SRA will be followed by four chapters. We plan to publish each chapter in scientific research journals, led by our euROBIN Scientific Manager, Aude Billard (EPFL).
- From 25-28 November we celebrated the big event of the year: a fantastic second euROBIN week with our first coopetition in Nancy, France. It was a success without a doubt, and we would like to thank especially Serena Ivaldi and all her team from INRIA for the hard work of organising such a visible robotics week. And thank you Pedro U. Lima (IST-ID) and your team for the realisation of the first ever coopetition. Our reviewers and EU representatives visited our event and left with a great impression.
- You can watch the full video of our event here and the short version here.
- And all euROBIN videos on our YouTube channel.
As for the future, at euROBIN Week we also learned there about the current limitations of end2end live demonstration capabilities in complex everyday scenarios. There is still a long way to go until our final event, but we now know what the obstacles are there and where to find the best experts on each topic in Europe. We hope all participates there enjoyed the event and learned a lot for your ongoing work. Thank you all for your commitment, enthusiasm and cooperation.
Next year we will be present at the AUTOMATICA in Munich. It will take place from 24 to 27 June 2025. And our last event will take place in spring/early summer 2026. The venue has not yet been fixed, we will keep you all informed! Stay tuned! In the meantime, we hope to have a great year in this fantastic project with all of you.
We wish you happy holidays and all the best for the coming year.
Alin, DLR coordination team and the euROBIN Team