Robotics and Automation Magazine

Support for Research

EURON (http://www.euron.org) has a joint research program through which prospective research projects are sponsored. This is to ensure that a number of emerging ideas originating from the European Robotics community might warrant further consideration to determine their feasibility and potential integration into the general initiative. In addition topical research studies across the initiative are sponsored, in the form of Special Interest Groups, to allow close integration of the involved communities. For specialized studies of well defined topics the network has also setup “research ateliers” for single venue time limited studies.

Thus, as part of its research coordination the network has invited applications for support in terms of:

• Prospective Research Projects (PRP)
• Research Ateliers (RA) and
• Special Interest Groups (SIG)

A Prospective Research Project (PRP) is a focused effort to investigate a well-defined problem. PRPs are expected to provide support to one of the areas of the on-going Integrated Projects (IPs) in the area of "Beyond Robotics" (i.e. either Hybrid bionic systems or Cognitive Companion or Robot ecologies). They may be of an exploratory nature, or test rapidly the credibility of new research ideas and concepts, complementing the research, bridging the gaps, and thereby consolidating the IP and its position at the forefront of research. A successful project may also be followed by a submission of a proposal for a regular EU project. The project proposals are evaluated through a peer-review process, supervised by the Network Board.

A Research Atelier (RA) is a focused effort on a well-defined question taking place at a single venue, with participation of researchers from a number of different institutions and/or companies over a limited period of time. The duration of an atelier can be from a few days to a month. The aim of an atelier is cross-institution and/or cross-discipline integration.

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are an ad hoc collection of five or more EURON institutions that come together to form a micro community to address a specific topic that is of common interest to all SIG members. The initiative to form a SIG lies completely with the members, and they are free to select the topic of their SIG.

So far, support has been provided to:

1. “PHRIDOM aimed at charting physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI)” (PRP)
2. “RoboEthics” (RA)
3. “ROSE: a Robotics Ontology for the Semantic WEB” (RA)
4. “Visual Perception System for a Social Robot” (SIG)
5. “Lower-Extremity Movement Restoration through Muscle Closed-loop FES Control using Natural Sensor Feedback” (PRP)
6. “Network Robot Systems” (RA)
7. “COOPROB: Cooperative Robotics” (SIG)
8. “RoTeMAS: Robot Teleoperation through a Motion Analysis System with Force Feedback” (PRP)
9. “GRASPABLE: Designing a Behaviour for Grasping the Graspable” (PRP)
10. “REFLORA: Robotic Exogenous Flora” (PRP)

while a few more efforts will be added to the list. Further information on the research funding activities of EURON can be found in http://www.euron.org/activities/projects/.

Parties interested in promoting certain activities via this column can contact either Kostas Kyriakopoulos, kkyria AT central.ntua.gr) or Bruno Siciliano, siciliano AT unina.it).

Contributed by Kostas Kyriakopoulos and Bruno Siciliano.