In our December 2005 column, the European Technology Platform in Robotics (EUROP) was introduced as an initiative of &circa;50 European leading robotic industrial and research organizations to stay at the forefront of robotics development, production and use by ensuring that industrially relevant research goals, priorities and action plans can be agreed and relevant actions implemented. Now, a year later, this initiative has been supported by &circa;170 members that have contributed during two workshops (Torino, January 17-18, 2006, and Paris, February 27-28, 2006) towards the effort ensuring that EUROP will undertake the following activities :

• driving forward the robotic vision by developing a Strategic Agenda
• uniting all the main industrial and academic robotics stakeholders and public authorities around this common vision
• aligning the fragmented RD in the European Research Area along the Strategic Agenda
• setting up and maintaining a communication activity
• developing and promoting an educational program about robotics
• steering new legal structures to ensure effectiveness of EUROP
• launching an activity to enhance the innovation environment
• linking with relevant initiatives outside the EU
• building on European strengths in research communities related to robotics
• promoting mechanisms to allow the transfer of RD between industry and academia
• exploiting synergies between civilian and defense sectors.

EUROP was officially launched on June 29, 2006 in Brussels with presentations of leading EUROP officers such as: Patrick Curlier - EUROP Chairman, Jean François Coutris - Managing Director Sagem DS, Geoff Pegman - Managing Director RuRobot, Giovani Barontini - CTO Finmeccanica, Stephan Mueller - CEO Kuka Roboter and David Bisset - Director iTechnic. Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media was present and addressed the audience by a presentation entitled: "The Emerging European Robotic Sector: On Track for Productivity Growth and New Service Innovation".

The European Commission is promoting "Technology ", such as EUROP, by encouraging companies from different sectors to work together to become more competitive and develop new products and services. The strategic research goals of these platforms are also important inputs to priority settings in publicly supported research, including in the Commission's 7th Research Framework Programme.

EUROP's coordinates are: EUROP Office, 27 Rue Leblanc, 75512 Paris Cedex 15 Tel: +33153232016, Fax: +33158117084, http://www.robotics-platform.eu.com.

Parties interested inpromoting certain activities via this column can contact either Kostas Kyriakopoulos (http://users.ntua.gr/kkyria, kkyria AT central.ntua.gr) or Bruno Siciliano (http://wpage.unina.it/sicilian, siciliano AT unina.it).

Contributed by Kostas Kyriakopoulos and Bruno Siciliano

We hope that you will get involved in many of EURON's activities and encourage others to do so as well.

Attending meetings is an excellent way of making contacts and friends within the community. The Annual Meetings are the major instrument for this purpose.

A lot of things are happening all the time in the European robotics community: conferences and workshops are being organised, projects are starting, job offers are announced, etc. The EURON mailing list is the place-to-be for all your communications around these topics.