"Imagine a society where robots support you everywhere in your daily life. Just think, for example, about the impact e-commerce has had in recent decades, and imagine robots operating in every part of that chain at the interface between the internet and the real world. Robots will make you a personalised product, pack your orders in warehouses, deliver your parcel, even assemble your goods or cook a meal to your specifications in your home. This is the vision that the robots working together in euROBIN share and will work towards. This network is a unique opportunity for the actively developing robotics and AI science community in Europe, for scientific progress, and for the creation of a closely connected network of cross-border collaboration," said Prof. Alin Albu-Schäffer, Director of the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics and coordinator of the euROBIN network.
The euROBIN network has 31 partners from 14 countries. It is coordinated by the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and brings together top research institutions and industrial partners across sectors such as the Sorbonne University, the Technical University of Munich, ETH Zurich, KTH Stockholm and the Frauenhofer Society. The network received a total of €12.5 million (312.5 million crowns) from the EU and Switzerland and was launched in July 2022. CIIRC CTU is the only Czech representative in the project.
"EuROBIN provides us with a unique opportunity to test our research results in new applications in collaboration with the best intelligent robotics research labs in Europe. Among other things, we will build on our research into learning robotic manipulation skills from Internet instructional videos. The goal is to optimize the acquired skills for new tasks, for example in the manufacturing industry or for robots helping in the home. We will also conduct experiments in our well-equipped RICAIP testbed for advanced industrial manufacturing," says Dr. Josef Šivic, principal researcher of the euROBIN project at the CIIRC CTU.
CIIRC CTU is now involved in four of the six major European projects on artificial intelligence supported by the European Commission in the last two years, including euROBIN. "Being a partner in euROBIN, VISION, TAILOR and ELISE, in addition to being the headquarters of the Central European AI initiatives CLAIRE and ELLIS, a partner in the European data initiatives Gaia-X and IDSA, and the coordinator of the European centre of excellence for distributed manufacturing RICAIP, makes CIIRC CTU an important driver (not only) within the European AI networks," adds Prof. Vladimír Mařík, Scientific Director of CIIRC CTU.
"CIIRC CTU is also the European Digital Innovation Hub for Artificial Intelligence (EDIH CTU) and the EIT Manufacturing hub for the Czech Republic, which makes us a unique intersection between basic research and its industrial application. The CIIRC is thus a valuable partner for leading research institutions as well as for industry and the application sphere at the Czech and European level," says Dr. Ondřej Velek, Director of the CIIRC CTU.
Further information on the project objectives and partners can be found here.
Photo: DLR, Commencing of the project in Munich