Alessandro Settimi tells us more about the work package 8 activities in the euROBIN project. One of the main goals of euROBIN is to create a community that shares tools and results between researchers and industry to advance our goals of making intelligent robots serve our society. To do this, intense networking, dissemination and exploitation activities are planned.
For networking we will organize cooperative competitions and hackathons, scientific workshops and summer schools, and cascade funding. The euROBIN cooperative competitions (or coopetitions) aim at extending the ongoing efforts in Europe on benchmarking research robot competitions - namely the European Robotics League (ERL) and its rules - to foster collaboration among developing teams and the definition of an ontology to represent functionalities and datasets used.
The project goal is to achieve cognition-enabled transferable embodied AI, seen as “the most fundamental scientific and technological challenge that is currently hindering the breakthrough of AI-powered robotics, and hampering its wider deployment and commercialization”. This means introducing novel approaches for “standard” design and development of robot task plans, such that the developed modules can be transferred between robots and applications flexibly and behave robustly to the associated differences.
The project has a clear and focused scientific vision centered around the cognitively-enabled transferrable embodied AI idea spreading into almost all aspects of modern robotics research. The project aims at a co-evolution process of concepts, technology and applications through cooperation among partners and external Academic Institutions and Research Centers. The common understanding of transferability on hardware and software levels will evolve at the same pace as the scientific and technological methods.
euROBIN will exploit workshops to share the know-how among the partners and to disseminate results and incorporate feedback and knowledge from the entire robotics community. Moreover, euROBIN will support the organization of hackathons and summer schools for Ph.D. students to boost the knowledge of most advanced robotics and AI methodologies and enhance young researchers’ collaborations.
euROBIN will provide the financial support to third parties awarded after a call for proposals. During the project up to 38 Bottom-up Projects, distributed in approx. 26 Exchange Programmes (3 Open Calls) and approx. 12 collaborative projects (2 Open Calls), respectively. The maximum amount of financial support will never exceed 60.000 EUR EC Contribution per Bottom-up Project. The activities implemented will be: Open Call preparation, launch, and dissemination; Selection process, including evaluation of proposals by independent experts, and SGA signature; Third parties follow up and payment.
For dissemination we will enforce technology and methodology spread through the Brain Magnet program for Young Researchers and Scientific Fellows, and we will improve the dialogue between academia and science industry through a dedicated communication plan.
One of the main euROBIN goal is to transfer knowledge and methods among the network groups and beyond through personnel exchange. The euROBIN Brain Magnet Programme is a travelling and exchange programme at all qualification levels: PhD students, young researchers, senior researchers and professors. The main objective of the programme is to transfer methodology and technology to at least two robotic systems of the consortium partners. PhD students and postdocs will be involved in the test and benchmarking activities on the platforms and their preparation to the challenges. Top senior scientists and professors will provide scientific advice; contribute to scientific roadmaps, challenge design and dissemination, give tutorials, and co-organize workshops.
To improve the dialogue between academia and science industry and to boost the participation of the robotics companies in the euROBIN network, structuring and stimulating the dialogue with and among them through all the networking euROBIN activities ad opportunities such as the EuroCore database, hackathons, workshops and coopetions.
The underlying idea is to attract robotics companies to become part of the euROBIN network because of the offered advantages, spreading from young professional (such as Ph.D. working in robotics) to technology and software access. Once companies will be profiled, they will be inserted in dedicated databases, considering their needs in terms of human resources and technologies. Beside their opportunity to access the EuroCore dabase, a Match-making systems will be developed in the form of database entries association, and provided in the form of an online platform that will be developed in the project with the following goals.
A flywheel effect is foreseen for the remaining years of the projects based on the advantages that the companies will receive from this program and on the exploitation of the research outcomes in industrial related applications.
The goals of the communication plan are to create own and recognisable brand that facilitate to identify the goals, principles and activities of euROBIN within in physical and/or digital communication actions; to ensure widespread visibility of all activities to close the gap between the consortium and target audiences; and to grow in terms of audience even beyond the reach representing the sum of each individual partner maximizing the impact of project actions.
For exploitation we will create a database of reusable software and data through the EuroCore Data and Code repository and related documentation, datasheets, and tutorials.
Technologically, euROBIN will lay down architectures and tools to exploit European robot diversity through the power of their communication and interoperability. It will leverage the outstanding research results and technological platforms of its core partners and of the European robotics community at large, founding and nurturing a European Robotics Collaborative Repository (EuroCore). The repository is intended to persist and grow beyond the end of the project, supported by industrial contributions and further funding schemes. It should be the active technological core of a vibrant eco-system for exchange within the research community. It will foster knowledge and technology transfer to small and medium robotics enterprises, as well as to large industry end users from various sectors.
The euROBIN project partners consider cognition-enabled transferable embodied AI as the most fundamental scientific and technological challenge that is currently hindering the breakthrough of AI-powered robotics and hampering its wider deployment and commercialization.
To achieve true transferability and reproducibility a great effort will be made exploiting an open source approach, working on Documentation, Datasheets and Tutorials. A common language, tandards and benchmarks will be established, for researchers and end-users to interface them with capabilities of the new generation of technologies. This aim is to accelerate the research by documentation, tutorials and datasheets to make papers and code usable by others.