2006

Funding: European Commission (FP6 IST 045201)

Duration: 1 October 2006 — 30 September 2009

Partners: University of Karlsruhe, Germany; Università degli Studi di Verona, Italy; Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Germany; Université Paris VI Pierre et Marie Curie, France; Université de Montpellier II, France; BrainLAB, Germany; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France.

Description: The main objective of the project is to develop an innovative and universal robotic assistant system to support a human in dextrous manipulation. For this reason we address methods to increase accuracy for lightweight compliant robotic systems during surgical procedures with human interaction. The approach focuses on adaptive control by exhibiting rich sensory-motor skills and multi-sensory measurement to distinctly increase the system accuracy.

URL: http://wwwipr.ira.uka.de/accurobas

Funding: European Commission (NEST-Adventure 15653)

Duration: 1 February 2006 — 31 July 2009

Partners: Scuola Superiore di Studi Universitari e Perfezionamento Sant’Anna, Italy; Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, France; Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zurich, Switzerland; Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.

Description: The ARES project aims at developing an entirely new type of surgical tools, capable of entering the human body through natural orifices (by insertion, ingestion or inhalation) or very small incisions (injection), and configuring themselves in complex kinematic structures at the specific site of intervention. In order to achieve tangible results in the three-year time frame, ARES is focusing on the specific objective of developing prototypical surgical robots for the use in the gastrointestinal tract.

URL: http://www.ares-nest.org

Funding: European Commission (FP6 IST-2006-33579)

Duration: 1 June 2006 — 31 May 2009

Partners: Association of Research and Industrial Co-operation of Andalucia, Spain (66); Technische Universität Berlin, Germany; Flying Cam, Belgium; University of Twente, the Netherlands; Universität Stuttgart, Germany; Selex Sensors and Airborne Systems Ltd, United Kingdom; Iturri, Spain; Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany.

Description: The project has designed, developed and demonstrated a platform providing the middleware and the functionalities required for the cooperation among autonomous helicopters, and a ground sensor-actuator wireless network, including mobile nodes carried by people and vehicles. The platform enables the operation in sites with difficult access and without communication infrastructure. Then, the project considers the self-deploying of the network by means of autonomous helicopters with the ability to transport and deploy loads (communication equipment and nodes of the ground network). The project has been the first that demonstrated the joint transportation of a load by means of three autonomous helicopters. Furthermore, the functionalities of autonomous cooperative people tracking, cooperative surveillance, cooperative fire detection and confirmation, and autonomous deployment of sensor nodes have been already demonstrated.

URL: http://www.aware-project.net

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-027140)

Duration: 1 January 2006 — 28 February 2010

Partners: ETH Zurich; INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique; CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Max Planck Society; IDIAP Research Institute; Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève; Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade de Coimbra; Probayes; BlueBotics; AFWO GmbH (Agency for Research Funding); Electricité de France; Aeroscout.

Description: Within the BACS project the Bayesian mathematical framework is proposed as an alternative computing framework capable to deal with incompleteness and uncertainty. The main scientific objectives of this project are:

1. To demonstrate that Bayesian probability theory is a feasible alternative mathematical framework.
2. To propose a new modeling methodology to both, better understand the cognition of living beings, and to build more efficient artificial cognitive systems.
3. To validate the whole approach by demonstrating effective Bayesian cognitive models for living beings and artificial systems by producing results. This can clearly and objectively be assessed with new designed experimental paradigms.

BACS will address both, cognitive modeling and cognitive systems within the same project. These are two complementary ways to validate the Bayesian cognitive theory, methodology and tools, They enable us to use biology as a source of inspiration to build more efficient artificial cognitive systems. Furthermore, artificial cognitive systems are also used as test beds to validate natural cognitive models.

URL: http://www.bacs.ethz.ch

Funding: European Commission (FP7-IST-045058)

Duration: 1 November 2006 — 31 October 2009

Partners: KUKA Roboter, Germany; Alenia Aeronautica, Italy; CEA List, France; National Centre for Scientific Research, LAAS, France; Comau, Italy; Deltatron, Finland; EUnited Robotics, Belgium; Fraunhofer Institut für Produktionstechnik und Automatisierung (IPA), Germany; Galileo Avionica, Italy; Indra Sistemas, Spain; iTechnic, United Kingdom; Robosoft, France; RURobots, United Kingdom; Scuola di Robotica, Italy; Scuola Superiore de Sant’ Anna, Italy.

Description: The objective of CARE is to identify research priorities and to define a strategic research agenda (SRA) for robotics in Europe. CARE covers the complete robotics picture including industry, service (both professional and domestic), security and space with the following aims:

• Develop a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for robotics in Europe addressing in detail the technological challenges with a strong focus on research & technology cross-fertilization in order to facilitate the synergies in the community and to optimize the resources. This SRA covers in particular roadmapping, business plans and trends facilitating implementation and will involve a large representation from the European Robotics Community.
• Address the broader impact of Advanced Robotics on society assessing the legal, social and ethical issues surrounding the introduction of Advanced Robots that directly interact with their users in everyday human environments. It will also assess the educational issues.
• Address international cooperation issues within Europe and outside by examining the interaction between national and EU research funding and the necessary cooperation with competing industrial economies that will support the construction of a European robotic economy.

URL: http://www.robotics-care.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-045299)

Duration: 1 December 2006 — 30 November 2009

Partners: Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy; RoboTech srl, Italy; MIDRA, Italy; Örebro University, Sweden; HW Communication Ltd, United Kingdom; Robotiker Inmotion, Spain; Synapsis, Italy; Lucerne School of Engineering and Architecture, Switzerland; Haute Ecole d'ingénieur et de Gestion V, Switzerland.

Description: The DustBot project is aimed at designing, developing, testing and demonstrating a system for improving the management of urban hygiene based on a network of autonomous and cooperating robots, embedded in an Ambient Intelligence infrastructure.

URL: http://www.dustbot.org

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-045169)

Duration: 1 December 2006 — 31 May 2010

Partners: University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom; National
Centre of Scientific Research, France; Université de Cergy-Pontoise,
France; Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland; University
of Portsmouth, United Kingdom; National Technical University of Athens,
Greece; Entertainment Robotics, Denmark; Aldebaran Robotics, France;

Description: The overall goal of this project is the interdisciplinary investigation of socially situated development from an integrated or global perspective, as a key paradigm towards achieving robots that interact with humans in their everyday environments in a rich, flexible, autonomous, and user-centred way.

URL: http://www.feelix-growing.org

Funding: European Commission (FP6 Marie Curie 36186)

Duration: 1 November 2006 — 31 October 2010

Partners: University of Southampton, United Kingdom; Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (CEA), France; Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy; Universite de Montpellier II, France; Cybernetix, France; Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Greece; Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom; Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer, France Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal; European Joint Research Centre, Belgium; Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet, Norway; Universität Hannover, Germany; Universitatea din Craiova, Romania; Università di Girona, Italy; Universidade dos Açores, Portugal.

Description: The purpose of FREESUBNET is to provide a European-wide excellence in quality training to young and experienced researchers in the emerging field of Cooperative Autonomous Intervention Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) which are steadily becoming the tool of choice to carry out missions at sea without tight human supervision.

URL: http://www.freesubnet.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-045269)

Duration: 1 October 2006 — 31 January 2010

Partners: Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom (209); Universitat Jaume I de Castellon, Spain (3); University of Coimbra, Portugal (23); TOBB Ekonomi ve Teknoloji Universitesi, Turkey; Universitaet Paderborn, Germany; K-Team SA, Switzerland (160); Robotnik Automation, Spain (214); South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, United Kingdom; Space Applications Services, Belgium (204).

Description: The Guardians are a swarm of autonomous robots applied to navigate and search an urban ground. The project's central example is search and rescue in an industrial warehouse in smoke, as proposed by the Fire and Rescue Service of South Yorkshire. The job is time consuming and dangerous; toxics may be released and humans senses can be severely impaired. They get disoriented and may get lost. The robots warn for toxic chemicals, provide and maintain mobile communication links, infer localisation information and assist in searching.

URL: http://www.guardians-project.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-027819)

Duration: 1 January 2006 — 31 December 2009

Partners: University of Skövde, Sweden; Université Pierre et Marie Curie, France; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France; Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy; University of Sheffield, United Kingdom; University of the West of England, United Kingdom; BAE Systems, United Kingdom; Cyberbotics Ltd., Switzerland; Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary; Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain.

Description: The ICEA Project is focused on brain-inspired cognitive architectures, robotics and embodied cognition, bringing together cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, computational modelers, roboticists and control engineers.

The primary aim of the project is to develop a cognitive systems architecture integrating cognitive, emotional and bioregulatory (self-maintenance) processes, based on the architecture and physiology of the mammalian brain. The twofold hypothesis behind this research is that:

1. the emotional and bioregulatory mechanisms that come with the organismic embodiment of living cognitive systems also play a crucial role in the constitution of their high-level cognitive processes, and
2. models of these mechanisms can be usefully integrated in artificial cognitive systems architectures, which will constitute a significant step towards truly autonomous robotic cognitive systems that reason and behave in accordance with energy and other self-preservation requirements.

In ICEA we will develop a new generic autonomous agent architecture based on the extraction of control design patterns from bioregulatory, emotional and cognitive control loops based on the architecture and physiology of the rat brain

URL: http://iceaproject.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-034120)

Duration: 1 July 2006 — 30 June 2009

Partners: ETH Zurich, Switzerland; University of Freiburg, Germany;
Cedrat and Cedrat Technologies, France; Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de
Microtechnique SA, Switzerland; Berlin University of Technology, Germany;
Xsens, the Netherlands.

Description: utonomous micro flying robots combine a large variety of technological challenges and are therefore an excellent showcase for leading edge micro/nano technologies and their integration with information technology towards a fully operational intelligent micro-system. This project proposes, therefore, the development and implementation of the first fully autonomous micro helicopter comparable in size

URL: http://www.mufly.ethz.ch

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-4-27657)

Duration: 1 February 2006 — 31 January 2010

Partners: Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Germany (2); Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, Sweden (1); University of Göttingen, Germany; Aalborg University Denmark (62); Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia (24); Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain (70); Leiden University, the Netherlands; University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom; University of Southern Denmark, Denmark (16); University of Liege, Belgium.

Description: PACO-PLUS aims at the design of a cognitive robot that is able to develop perceptual, behavioural and cognitive categories in a self-emergent and measurable way and communicate and share these with humans and other artificial agents. The main paradigm of PACO-PLUS is that Objects and Actions are inseparably intertwined and that categories are therefore determined and also limited by the action an agent can perform and by the attributes of the world it can perceive; the resulting, so-called Object-Action Complexes (OACs) are the entities on which cognition. Entities "things" in the world of a robot or a human will only become semantically useful "objects" through the action that the agent can/will perform on them. The paradigm of Object-Action Complexes (OAC), which is at the center of the project, is investigated to address hard problems such as learning, decision making, and memorisation for situated agents

URL: http://www.paco-plus.org

Associated partner: ATR - Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Department of Humanoid Robotics and Computational Neuroscience, Kyoto, Japan.

Funding: European Commission (FP6-NMP-26697)

Duration: 1 September 2006 — 31 August 2010

Partners: European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company EADS, France; schmidt-Handling Gesellschaft für Handhabungstechnik MBH, Germany, Germany; Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung, Germany; Valtion teknillinen Tutkimuskeskus (VTT), Finland; Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Country: Spain; Tampereen Teknillinen Yliopisto, Finland; Technische Universität Berlin, Germany; Fundacion FATRONIK, Spain; Visual Components OY, Finland; PROFACTOR Produktionsforschungs GMBH, Austria; PI4_Robotics GMBH, Germany; BGS Bilgisayar Sist. VE HIZM. SAN. VE. TIC. A.S., Turkey; All-Time-Zones Engineering GMBH, Germany; Senur Elektrik Mot. San. VE Tic. A.S., Turkey; Comau SPA, Italy; EICAS Automazione SPA, Italy.

Description: One breakthrough of this project shall be to fill the gap between manual and automated assembly by introducing novel IAS technology and providing planning and integration tools to make this new technology applicable. At second breakthrough shall be reached by the re-configurability of assembly systems and the reusability of assembly equipment. On the one hand this is related to a modular structure of assembly systems incl. standard hardware- and software-interfaces of assembly equipment.

URL: http://www.pisa-ip.org

Funding: European Commission (STReP IST-045359)

Duration: 1 Oct 2006 — 30 Sept 2009

Partners: Centro “E. Piaggio”, Università di Pisa, Italy (92); Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, DLR, Germany (53); KUKA Roboter GmbH, Germany (48); LAAS, France (17); Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy (90); Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy (6).

Description: PHRIENDS is about developing key components of the next generation of robots, including industrial robots and assist devices (which include robots for the emerging market of non-industrial applications, e.g. for service, health-care, and entertainment), designed to share the environment and to physically interact with people. Such machines have to meet the strictest safety standards, yet also to deliver useful performance: this poses new challenges to the design of all components of the robot, including mechanics, control, planning algorithms and supervision systems. We propose an integrated approach to the co-design of robots for safe physical interaction with humans, which revolutionizes the classical approach for designing industrial robots – rigid design for accuracy, active control for safety – by creating a new paradigm: design robots that are intrinsically safe, and control them to deliver performance.

URL: http://www.phriends.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-045144)

Duration: 1 November 2006 — 31 April 2009

Partners: Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet Freiburg, Germany (47); University of Zaragoza, Spain (71); Politecnico di Milano, Italy (89); Università degli Studi di Milano - Bicocca, Italy (96).

Description: The aim of the Rawseeds Project is to stimulate and support progress in autonomous robotics by providing a comprehensive, high-quality Benchmarking Toolkit for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. The project aims at providing a comprehensive Benchmarking Toolkit, including high-quality multisensorial data sets, well defined Benchmarking Problems (BPs) based on the data sets, and state-of-the-art Benchmarking Solutions (BSs) in the form of algorithms, software, methodologies and instruments for the assessment of the BSs.

URL: http://www.rawseeds.org

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-045255)

Duration: 1 November 2006 — 1 June 2009

Partners: Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia; Eliko, Estonia; INRIA, France; Helsinki University of Technology, Finland; University of Oulu, Finland; Fatronik, Spain; Royal institute of Technology, Sweden; IdMind, Portugal; University of Genoa, Italy.

Description: The general objective of the project is to develop an open knowledge environment for self-configurable, low-cost and robust robot swarms usable in domestic and public area applications - cleaning, patrolling, semantic mapping, escorting and others.

The targeted solution integrates local knowledge bases of robots and global web services via ad hoc communication and decentralized autonomic service discovery and composition mechanism.

URL: http://roboswarm.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP6 IST-034002)

Duration: 1 November 2006 – 31 October 2009

Partners: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain; Technische Universität München, Germany; University of Salzburg, Austria; Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland; Dragados, S.A., Spain; Hewlett Packard European Innovation Centre, Italy; SpaceApplications Services, Belgium; National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan.

Description: The prime objective of this project is to establish a concept for, and develop prototypes of, a collaborative working environment, conceived such as to include robots and, by so doing, to improve productivity and safety.

URL: http://robot-at-cwe.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-035005)

Duration: 1 October 2006 — 30 September 2009

Partners: Scuola Superiore S.Anna, Italy; Aalborg University, Denmark; Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, France; Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt E.V., Germany; Fraunhofer Institut für Graphische Datenverarbeitung, Germany; HAPTION S.A., France; KUKA Roboter GmbH, Germany; Fundacion LABEIN, Spain; OMG plc, United Kingdom; Queen's University of Belfast, University Kingdom; Simonazzi S.p.A., Italy; Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Israel; University Montpellier-1, France; University of Tampere, Finland; Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Tecnicas de Guipuzcoa, Spain.

Description: SKILLS is an Integrated Project in the framework of european IST FP6 strategic objective named “Multimodal Interfaces” and deals with the acquisition, interpretation, storing and transfer of human skill by means of multimodal interfaces, Robotics, Virtual Environments (VE) technologies and Interaction Design methodologies.

A particular skill is difficult to be described as the modeling of a specific “act of doing” still represents a challenge in fields of research such as cognitive science, psychology, robotics, biomechanics and other behaviour-related studies.

Research on training of human skill represents a state-of-the-art issue in the field of laparoscopic and computer assisted surgery (systems based on VE and haptic technologies) as well as in the maintenance activities in the industrial field where, at present, Augmented Reality technologies are used to assist the human operator in complex manipulative operations.

However current systems do not include capturing systems that describe the special skills of high qualified persons while executing their challenging manipulations (e.g. to describe what makes a good surgeon).

SKILLS intends to introduce a novel approach to skill capturing, transfer and assessment based on enactive paradigms of interaction between the human operator and the interface system devoted to mimic task conditions.

Skill analysis adopts cognitive sciences and interaction design methodologies in order to obtain a digital representation of skill and to develop techniques for its capturing and rendering.

The acquired capability to handle specific skills with digital technologies can generate new ways of interaction with the computer and communicate knowledge through it, making future software applications more accessible to non-specialist users and allowing to generate digital archives of performed acts of doing which are now usually lost when the craftsman or the skilled worker loses his/her capabilities due to illness or declining of years.

SKILLS takes three different application domains into consideration for demonstrators: sport and entertainment, surgery and rehabilitation, manufacturing and industry. Interaction design methodologies are implemented in these contexts in order to address the design of novel interfaces focused on skill transfer and being able to improve task performances or generate innovative processes.

URL: http://www.skills-ip.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-)

Duration: 1 January 2006 — 31 December 2009

Partners: Alma Consulting Group, France; Altjira Software, Switzerland; Bar Ilan University, Israel; German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany; Erasmus MC, the Netherlands; Lunds Universitetet, Sweden; Universita' di Pavia, Italia; University of Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom; University of Granada, United Kingdom; Umeå University, Sweden; University Pierre&Marie Curie, France.

Description: The SENSOPAC project will combine machine learning techniques and modelling of biological systems to develop a machine capable of abstracting cognitive notions from sensorimotor relationships during interactions with its environment, and of generalising this knowledge to novel situations.

Through active sensing and exploratory actions the machine will discover the sensorimotor relationships and consequently learn the intrinsic structure of its interactions with the world and unravel predictive and causal relationships. Together with action policy formulation and decision making, this will underlie the machine’s abilities to create abstractions, to suggest and test hypotheses, and develop self-awareness.

The project will demonstrate how a naive system can bootstrap its cognitive development by constructing generalisation and discovering abstractions with which it can conceptualise its environment and its own self. The continuous developmental approach will combine self-supervised and reinforcement learning with motivational drives to form a truly autonomous artificial system.

Throughout the project, continuous interactions between experimentalists, theoreticians, engineers and roboticists will take place in order to coordinate the most rigorous development and testing of a complete artificial cognitive system.

URL: http://www.sensopac.org

Funding: European Commission (FP6-FET-022888)

Duration: 1 October 2006 — 31 March 2010

Partners: Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium; Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland; Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland; Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy.

Description: The Swarmanoid project proposes a highly innovative way to build robots that can successfully and adaptively live in human-made environments. The main scientific objective of the proposed research is the design, implementation and control of a novel distributed robotic system comprising heterogeneous, dynamically connected small autonomous robots so as to form what we call a swarmanoid. The swarmanoid that we intend to build will be comprised of numerous (60) autonomous robots of three types: eye-bots, hand-bots and foot-bots.

URL: http://www.swarmanoid.org

Funding: European Commission (FP6-)

Duration: 1 December 2006 — 30 November 2009

Partners: Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, Spain; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/LAAS, France; Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Switzerland; Asociación de Investigación y Cooperación Industrial de Andalucia, Spain; Scuola Superiore di Studi Universitari e di Perfezionamento Sant’Anna, Italy; Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain; Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal; University of Surrey, United Kingdom; Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona, Spain; Telefónica I+D, Spain; RoboTech, Italy.

Description: The URUS project will be focussed in designing a network of robots that in a cooperative way interact with human beings and the environment for tasks of assistance, transportation of goods, and surveillance in urban areas. Specifically, our objective is to design and develop a cognitive network robot architecture that integrates cooperating urban robots, intelligent sensors, intelligent devices and communications. Among the specific technology that will be developed in the project, there will be: navigation coordination; cooperative perception; cooperative map building; task negotiation; human robot interaction; and wireless communication strategies between users (mobile phones), the environment (cameras), and the robots. Moreover, in order to make easy the tasks in the urban environment, commercial platforms that have been specifically designed to navigate and assist humans in such urban settings will be given autonomous mobility capabilities. Proof-of concept tests of the systems developed will take place in a car free area of Barcelona.

URL: http://www-iri.upc.es/groups/urus

Funding: European Commission (FP6-033970)

Duration: 1 September 2006 — 31 August 2008

Partners: novineon Healthcare Technology Partners GmbH, Germany; Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy; SINTEF Stiftelsen for industriell og teknisk forskning ved Norges tekniske høgskole (NTH), Norway; KIST Europe GmbH, Germany; Sensitec GmbH, Germany; Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium; Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland; Centre de transfert en micro & nanotechnologies, France; Endosmart GmbH, Germany; SMIT Society for Medical Innovations and Technology, Germany; Ovesco Endoscopy AG, Germany; netMED AISBL, Belgium; Era Endoscopy Srl, Italy; Universitat de Barcelona, Spain; FORTH Foundation for research and technologies Hellas, Greece; Innovent Technology e.V., Germany; IMC Intelligent Microsystem Center, South Korea; Jagiellonian University, Poland; NeuriCam SPA, Italy.

Description: The project pursues to goal of realizing smart pill technologies and applications for gastrointestinal diagnosis and therapy. Cancers of the digestive tract are among the most significant killers in developed countries, with colon cancer ranging among the top 10 causes of death for both genders, male and female. If the disease is detected at this stage of pre-malignancy, local therapy, such as tissue resection or destruction, can be used to eradicate the disease before malignant transformation and the onset of invasive cancer.

The overall medical goal of the project is to enable medical devices through advanced technology that can dramatically improve early detection and treatment of gastrointestinal early cancers and cancer precursors. The main technological objective of the project is the take-up of microsystems and sub-components and their integration into robotic, mobile pill devices for useful and large impact applications in the medical field.

URL: http://www.vector-project.com

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-045541)

Duration: 1 September 2006 — 31 December 2009

Partners: Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom (209); Royal Military Academy, Belgium (32); Eidikos Logariasmos Erevnon Dimokriteiou Panepistimiou Thrakis, Greece (130); Universita Degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza', Italy (90); Przemyslowy Instytut Automatyki I Pomiarow, Poland (158); Space Applications Services, Belgium (204); Galileo Avionica - S.P.A., Italy; Intelligence for Environment and Security SRL-IES Solutions SRL, Italy; South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, United Kingdom.

Description: In the event of an emergency, due to a fire or other crisis, a necessary but time consuming pre-requisite, that could delay the real rescue operation, is to establish whether the ground can be entered safely by human emergency workers. The objective of the VIEW-FINDER project is to develop robots which have the primary task of gathering data. The robots are equipped with sensors that detect the presence of chemicals and, in parallel, image data is collected and forwarded to an advanced base station.

URL: https://view-finder-project.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP6-IST-027140)

Duration: 1 May 2006 — 2009

Partners: University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Germany; Vienna University of Technology, Austria; University of Verona, Italy; University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; The American University of Paris, France.

Description: To significantly advance the state of the art in Machine Learning particularly in Embodied Cognitive Systems, Computational Perception, Knowledge Engineering and Intelligent Assistive Robotics by developing formal theories, computational approaches and systems enabling an embodied agent to augment its cognitive capabilities through open-ended learning by experimentation.

URL: http://www.xpero.org