Other News

EU to double its RD investment in robotics

"The European Union will double its investments between 2007 and 2010 with almost €400 million to support European robotics research. This ambitious programme aims to forge stronger links between academia and industry, and plans to fund a widespread experimentation by academic researchers and industry."

CONGRATULATIONS to Herman and John and the new EURON Board following their resounding success in our big vote. Information about how the proposal will be implemented will follow later.

Approx. 110 votes were received out of the 199 possible. Of these, 109 were "yes" votes and only one "no" for the proposal. Individual candidates were also very positively endorsed.

Thanks to all who voted.

Note that EURON stopped accepting new members on Jan 20th 2008.

Science editorial on RoboEthics from Nov 2007.

The euron-dist mailing list has migrated server. This should have no effect on existing subscriptions, but remember to send your information to the new email address for distribution! See https://lists.iais.fraunhofer.de/sympa/info/euron-dist

Congratulations to Martin Hägele of Fraunhofer IPA (Stuttgart)! He was awarded the Joseph F. Engelberger Robotics Award in a ceremony in Chicago on June 13 at the occasion of this year's International Symposium on Robotics (ISR). The Engelberger Robotics Award is a prestigious robotics honour and recognizes outstanding individuals who have contributed to the advancement of the science of robotics and in the service of mankind. The award winners are selected by the past presidents of the Robotic Industries Association (RIA), the American trade group to specifically serve the robotics industry.

The picture shows Martin and Donald Vincent, Executive Vice President of the RIA.

Press release for the 4th Technology Transfer Award, March 2007.

A big WELCOME to Anne Bajart, EURON's new project officer to the European Commission. We hope that she enjoys working with EURON, and us with her!

A new journal ranking service provides a brand new paradigm to ranking more than 7,000 journals from all disciplines and introduces two new indicators relevant to journal quality by considering both the journal influence index and the paper influence index. Journal ranking is critically important to research and to the academia, hence doing it right is worthwhile. This web service is a passionate commitment to this endeavor.

The European Technology Platform (EUROP) is in charge of refining a Strategic Research Agenda on robotics, to be used by the European Union to prepare future calls for projects. The priorities that we decide on should be taken into account by the community as priorities for European research and industry.

The coordinated action CARE is organising the preparation of the Strategic Research Agenda for service robotics. Advice and information on this domain is sought from all concerned actors: big industries, SMEs and laboratories. If you can spend some time participating on the Strategic Research Agenda, please do so. This may simply mean reading the current version of the Agenda and sending in your comments on it.

Please email rodolphe.gelin AT cea.fr if interested.

The Strategic Research Agenda from May/June 2006 can be found here (in PDF).

The European Commission, the European Research Advisory Board andthe European Research Councils have recently each recommended adopting the policy of providing Open Access to research results. /br > There are non-research interests strongly lobbying against these recommendations, so a display of support by the research community is critically important. Please sign the petition. [ More details ... ]

The final version of the Euron Roboethics Roadmap was officially presented during the Roboethics Workshop at ICRA07.

EURON's Annual Meeting 2007 took place in Chania, Crete, in March. About 100 people attended. Many thanks to all who helped to make this event so enjoyable.

Henrik Christensen stepped down as Coordinator for the Network on 1st January 2007. Herman Bruyninckx is the new EURON Coordinator, responsible for all technical and scientific aspects of running the network. KTH remains responsible for legal and administrative matters.

Herman says: "It is my great pleasure to thank Henrik for the formidable work he has done in creating and running EURON, and in putting our Network clearly on the international robotics scene. His vision and perseverance will be sorely missed, and his departure is a great loss for EURON. Fortunately, Jeanna Ayoubi has agreed to remain administrative contact for EURON, so the transition will undoubtedly run smoothly."

The full message from our new Coordinator.

EURON hired a booth and made a presentation at the AUTOMATICA trade fair in Munich in May 2006. Both were well received, see the full page.

At the EUROS conference in Palermo a preliminary version of the video "Coffee Break" was shown which showcases the project idea of the Integrated Project "SMErobot". The SMErobot Consortium has been receiving many requests for distribution of the video which serves both as educational material and as a reference for problem driven research challenges in industrial robotics.

The video has therefore become available as a DVD with subtitles in various languages and comprehensive footage material. A compressed version of the video can be downloaded, otherwise please send an e-mail with your shipping address to Martin Haegele mmh AT ipa.fhg.de

The second Annual Meeting of EURON II was held onSaturday 18 March 2006 in Palermo, Italy.

The reviewers had been quite critical at the end of year one (although four of the five have since joined EURON), so many changes have been made and some are still ongoing.

The reports had interesting and significant content, the food was excellent, the breaks were long enough to have proper conversations in, the afternoon sessions gave the opportunity for focussed discussion — in short, the meeting was an excellent opportunity to Network.

"A thousand thanks" (as they say in Denmark) to Antonio Chella and his team for their organisation.

CONGRATULATIONS! to the fifth Georges Giralt PhD Award winner: Martijn Wisse, for his PhD entitled "Essentials of dynamic walking. Analysis and design of two-legged robots".

CONGRATULATIONS! to the two winners of the third Technology Transfer Award:

A summary of EURON's activities during 2005 is now available.

"World Robotics 2005: Statistics, Market Analysis, Forecasts, Case Studies and Profitability of Robot Investment" came out in October 2005 and is available as a book or as a CD-ROM. An abstract containing basic facts on industrial and service robot stock, new installations and market forecast is available in PDF format, as is the table of contents. The tables and graphs on service robots deserve special attention as they indicate substantial economic activity and optimistic forecasts.

The World Technology Evaluation Center (WTEC) completed their International Study of Robotics in August 2005. This two-year look at robotics research and development in the United States, Japan, Korea, and Western Europe, resulted in a media briefing and robot exhibition on Friday, September 16, 2005 in Arlington, Virginia.

EURON I was very instrumental in helping the FET office to define the 6th Framework Programme: 2003 - 2007. We intend being equally active in Framework 7.

Deprecated (due to lack of manpower for maintenance).