EURON report 2005

Year 2005 saw the completion of the first year of the EURON-II contract and a review of our effort. We also managed to launch a number of ad-hoc defined projects, ateliers and studies.

The research roadmap is getting close to its completion (in version 1). It will be an important input to the EU preparation of the 7th framework programme. As a parallel effort the Technology Platform on Robotics (EUROP) was officially mandated by the commission during October 2005. This industry driven effort will be another important part of the 7th framework programme. Both efforts will also also need your assistance during 2006 to make sure that we can establish a strong research presence beyond 2006.

In education, five summer schools were organised with strong participation from many different partners. The summer schools have continued to be a major success of EURON. I am of course most grateful for all the work put in by the event organisers and the involved teachers. Thank You! These activities are invaluable to the students that attend the schools and for the community integration. The organisation of the Giralt PhD Award has also taken place - The 2005 winner of the PhD Award was Juan Andrade Cetto. The 2006 noominations are at present being evaluated by the committee. As "usual" 12 nominations were received.

On the industry side the main effort is of course the participation in the setup of the EUROP platform and organisation of a number of Academic / Industry events for further integration across sectors and disciplines. In addition the tech transfer award continued to be an important mechanism to show examples of good academic/industry collaborations. The 2005 winner was a joint Lund University / ABB project. The next call for nominations was recently advertised (deadline for submissions 31 January 2006)

On the dissemination side the new EURON www facility is at present undergoing revisions to make the presentation in accordance with reviewer suggestions. The site has a host of interesting information about robotics in Europe. Check it regularly for updates! The STAR book series has also continued to be a major success. A number of new dissemination activities are also taking place, in terms of information leaflets, a DVD with videos from EU research laboratories, etc. You will hear much more about this during January 2006.

On the coordination side we had the annual meeting in Warsaw, which was highly inspiring and really well organised. The next annual meeting will be in the context of the EUROS-06 meeting. EUROS will be 16-17 March and the annual meeting will be 18 March. All of it will be in Palermo (hopefully little warmer than Warsaw:-). EUROS received 48 submissions and recently 16 of those were selected for presentation at the meeting. In addition a number of workshops etc will take place, so we ought to have a highly rewarding meeting in March. I hope to see many of you there.

Finally, the board of EURON is preparing a new call for proposals likely to appear during early January, so it is time to team up. As a new feature research project will be targeted at young researchers (within 5 years after PhD graduation). It is our hope that these grants can help in the organisation of the next generation of strong European researchers.

Let me finish this brief report by wishing you all the best for the Christmas, the holidays and the New Year. Thank you for the wonderful interactions during the past year.

Henrik I Christensen
EURON Coordinator