2008

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-214856)

Partners: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Sony France S.A. CSL Paris; Universität Osnabrück; Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona; Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Iasi.

Duration: 1 February 2008 – 31 January 2011

Description: ALEAR will build autonomous social humanoid robots that co-develop cognitive and language capabilities through situated interaction. It adopts a whole system approach tackling the complete chain from embodiment and sensori-motor action to conceptualisation and language. Work includes carefully controlled experiments in which autonomous humanoid robots self-organise rich conceptual frameworks and communication systems with features similar to those found in human languages. The machinery required for these experiments will drive the state-of-the-art in all relevant technologies, particularly robotics, concept formation, computational linguistics and AI.

URL: http://www.alear.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-224565)

Partners: Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy; Imperial College London, United Kingdom; Università di Pisa, Italy; Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland; Micro Tech S.r.l., Italy; Karl Storz GmbH, Germany; STM Microelectronics, Italy; The University Court of the University of St Andrews, United Kingdom; University of Barcelona, Spain; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France; Novineon Healthcare Technology Partners GmbH, Germany.

Duration: 1 May 2008 – 30 April 2012

Description: ARAKNES is focused on innovative robotic system for endoluminal surgery. The project aims at bringing inside the patient’s stomach a set of advanced bio-robotic and microsystem technologies for therapy and surgery.
The ultimate goal of ARAKNES is to integrate the advantages of traditional open surgery, laparoscopic surgery (MIS), and robotics surgery into a novel operative system for bi-manual, ambulatory, tethered, visible scarless surgery, based on an array of smart microrobotic instrumentation.
According to these, the precise objective of the project is to bring the ARAKNES system close to real industrial manufacturing and full product validation, so as to make it available soon to surgeons for clinical use.

URL: http://www.araknes.org

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-215370)

Partners: Syddansk Universitet; Universiteit Antwerpen; The University of Edinburgh; Universität Ulm.

Duration: 1 February 2008 – 31 January 2011.

Description: The principal objective of this project is to find ways of engineering versatile and robust systems able to respond sensibly to challenges not precisely specified in their design. It focuses on embodied active sonar perception systems that can serve as a complement to vision and facilitate the deployment of robotic systems in situations where vision is infeasible. To achieve its objective the project will model the bat's coordination of its acoustic, behavioural and morphological choices while hunting. Two bio-mimetic demonstrators will be implemented, and evaluated on tasks analogous to the hunting tasks of their living prototypes. Roboticists and ethologists will closely collaborate.

URL: www.chiroping.org

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-215181)

Partners: The University of Birmingham; Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz; Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan; Univerza V Ljubljani; Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg; Technische Universität Wien.

Duration: 1 May 2008 – 30 June 2012

Description: CogX tackles the challenge of understanding the principles according to which cognitive systems should be built if they are to handle novelty, situations unforeseen by their designers, and open-ended, challenging environments with uncertainty and change. The aim is to meet this challenge by creating a theory — evaluated in robots — of how a cognitive system can model its own knowledge; use this to cope with uncertainty and novelty during task execution; extend its own abilities and knowledge; and extend its own understanding of those abilities. Imagine a cognitive system that models not only the environment, but its own understanding of the environment and how this understanding changes under action. It identifies gaps in its own understanding and then plans how to fill those gaps so as to deal with novelty and uncertainty in task execution, gather information necessary to complete its tasks, and to extend its abilities and knowledge so as to perform future tasks more efficiently.

URL: http://cogx.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-215805)

Partners: University of the West of England, Bristol; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia; Max-Planck Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften EV; University of Bristol; Université Lyon 2 Louis Lumière.

Duration: 1 March 2008 – 29 February 2012.

Description: CHRIS addresses fundamental issues related to the design of safe human robot interaction. Robots and humans are assumed to share a given environment and to cooperate on tasks. The primary research question is: How can interaction between a human and an intelligent autonomous agent be safe without being pre-scripted and still achieve the desired goal? The key hypothesis is that safe interaction between humans and robots can be engineered physically and cognitively for joint physical tasks requiring co-operative manipulation of real world objects. Engineering principles for safe movement and dexterity will be explored on three robot platforms, and developed with regard to language, communication and decisional action planning where the robot reasons explicitly with its human partner. Integration of cognition for safe co-operation in the same physical space will spawn significant advances in the area, and be a step towards genuine service robotics.

URL: http://www.chrisfp7.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP7 ICT-216239)

Partners: Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy (6); Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecture des Systèmes (LAAS), France, (17); Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, e.V. (DLR), Germany, (53); Forschungszentrum Informatik an der Universität Karlsruhe, Germany; OMG plc, United Kingdom; Seconda Università di Napoli, Italy; Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Italy, (98); Universität des Saarlandes, Germany.

Duration: 1 February 2008 – 31 January 2012

Description: The DEXMART project is focused on artificial systems reproducing smart sensory-motor human skills, which operate in unstructured real-world environments. The emphasis is on manipulation capabilities achieved by dexterous and autonomous, and also human aware dual-arm/hand robotic systems. The goal is to allow a dual-arm robot including two multi-fingered redundant hands to grasp and manipulate the same objects used by human beings. The objects shall be allowed to have different shape, dimension and weight. The manipulation will take place in an unsupervised, robust and dependable manner so as to allow the robot to safely cooperate with humans for the execution of given tasks. The robotic system has to possess the ability to autonomously decide between different manipulation options. It has to properly and quickly react to unexpected situations and events as well as understand changes in the behaviour of humans cooperating with it. Moreover, in order to act in a changing scenario, the robot should be able to acquire knowledge by learning new action sequences so as to create a consistent and comprehensive manipulation knowledge base through an actual reasoning process. The possibility to exploit the high power-to-weight ratio of smart materials and structures will be explored aimed at the design of new hand components (finger, thumb, wrist) and sensors that will pave the way for the next generation of dexterous robotic hands.

URL: http://www.dexmart.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-217077)

Partners: Università degli Studi di Genova; Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster; Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna; Universitat Jaume I de Castellon; Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

Duration: 1 March 2008 – 28 February 2011.

Description: This project will investigate the interplay between vision and motion control, and study ways of exploiting this interaction to achieve the knowledge of the surrounding environment that allows a robot to act correctly. Crucial issues addressed are object recognition, dynamic shifts of attention, 3D space perception including eye and arm movements and including action selection in unstructured environments. Work will result in: a robotic system for interactive visual stereopsis; a model of a multisensory egocentric representation of the 3D space; a model of human-robot cooperative actions in a shared workspace.

URL: http://www.eyeshots.it

Funding: European Commission (IST-FP7-IP-215821

Partners: Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (1); Universität Karlsruhe (2); Techniche Universität München (177); Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität; Lappeenranta University of Technology (189); Technische Universität Wien (10); Foundation for Research and Technology, Greece; Universitat Jaume I (3); Otto Bock.

Duration: 1 March 2008 – 29 February 2012

Description: The aim of GRASP is the design of a cognitive system capable of performing grasping and manipulation tasks in open-ended environments, dealing with novelty, uncertainty and unforeseen situations. To meet the aim of the project, studying the problem of object manipulation and grasping will provide a theoretical and measurable basis for system design that is valid in both human and artificial systems. This is of utmost importance for the design of artificial cognitive systems that are to be deployed in real environments and interact with humans and other agents.

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

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-214668)

Partners: University of Plymouth; Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia; Universität Bielefeld; Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche; The University of Hertfordshire Higher Education Corporation; Syddansk Universitet; The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research.

Duration: 1 March 2008 – 29 February 2012.

Description: ITALK will develop artificial embodied agents, based on the iCub humanoid platform, able to acquire complex behavioural, cognitive, and linguistic skills through individual and social learning, and to adapt their abilities to changing internal, environmental and social conditions. The project intends to corroborate the hypothesis that the parallel development of action, conceptualisation and social interaction permits the bootstrapping of language capabilities, which parting turn enhance cognitive development. It will also lead to: (a) new models and scientific explanations of the integration of action, social and linguistic skills; (b) new interdisciplinary sets of methods for analysing the interaction of language, action and cognition in humans and artificial cognitive agents; (c) new cognitively-plausible engineering principles and approaches for the design of robots with behavioural, cognitive, social and linguistic skills.

URL: http://italkproject.org

Funding: European Commission (FP7 216100)

Partners: Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy; Karolinska Institutet, Sweden; Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne, Switzerland; Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan (KTH), Sweden; Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale (Inserm), France.

Duration: 1 February 2008 – 31 January 2011.

Description: The objective of the LAMPETRA proposal is developing lamprey/salamander bioinspired artefacts to perform neuroscientific studies related to goal-directed locomotion and to find new solutions for high-performance artificial locomotion, in terms of fast-response, adaptability, reliability, energy efficiency, and control. These issues will be pursued by implementing a bio-inspired artificial system (mimicking the neuronal level, the biomechanical structure, the control functions) and by performing advanced numerical simulations focused on the neural control system of locomotion. The bio-inspired system will be composed by a high number of segments, a compliant body structure, muscle-like actuators, legs-like appendages, artificial stretch receptors, vestibular and vision sensors, and architectures for low/high level control functions.

URL: http://www.lampetra.org

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-215554)

Partners: Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London; SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science AB; Inesc ID - Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores: Investigacao e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa; The University of Hertfordshire Higher Education Corporation; Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg; Heriot-Watt University; Politechnika Wroclawska; Eotvos Lorand Tudomanyegyetem; Foundation of Aperiodic Mesmerism; Cnotinfor - Centro de Novas Tecnologias da Informacao, Limitada.

Duration: 1 March 2008 – 31 August 2012.

Description: LIREC will establish a multi-faceted (memory, emotions, cognition, communication, learning, etc.) theory of artificial long-term companions, embody it in innovative technology, verify the theory and technology experimentally in real social environments, and provide guidelines for designing and using such companions. The project draws on studies of human-pet interaction and builds upon existing robotics technologies such as Pioneers, Peoplebots, & iCat in order to develop and evaluate experimentally the theoretical framework. Companions will have different capabilities, based on a common cognitive-affective architecture, depending on their intended use. This may involve the ability to respond sensitively to the user, regard his or her possible motives and intentions, and encompass several forms of communication. Different scenarios will be set up, such as the "robot house", "spirit of the building" and "my mentor", and several activity types will be tested in each. The scenarios will involve humans interacting with robots and/or graphical companions in their day-to- day lives over periods of weeks or months. The migration of companions to different "bodies", for instance a mobile phone, will also be explored.

URL: http://www.lirec.org

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-215756)

Partners: Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich; Hocoma AG; Univerza V Ljubljani; Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya; Neurologische Klinik Bad Aibling GmbH & Co Betriebs KG.

Duration: 1 January 2008 – 31 December 2010.

Description: MIMICS will enhance a robot-assisted motion rehabilitation system with adaptive feedback based on physiological and cognitive data (motion, forces, voice, muscle activity, heart rate, skin conductance etc.). Data will be acquired in real-time, and the intention of the patient and the overall psycho-physiological state will be inferred from them. This information will be used to drive the therapy robots, in combination with immersive virtual reality systems including 3D graphics and 3D sound, in order to make rehabilitation training more realistic and motivating. Progress is likely in, for instance, real-time sensing, fusion of multi-sensory real-time data streams, and multi-modal immersive VR interaction. Much effort will be devoted to evaluation with patients to assess the effects of using the system. It is expected that MIMICS technology will enter clinical routine so that large patient populations (e.g. stroke, spinal cord injury patients) can benefit.

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

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-228045)

Partners: Università degli Studi di Parma.

Duration: 1 December 2008 – 30 November 2013.

Description: The objective of this proposal is the development of an open architecture for future autonomous vehicles to become a standard platform shared by car makers in the design of next generation intelligent vehicles. It is based on 360 degrees sensorial suite which includes perceptual and decision making modules, with the ultimate goal of providing the vehicle with autonomous driving capabilities and/or supervise the driver's behaviour. The perception module also includes vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure subsystems, to increment the vehicle s sensing capabilities.

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Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-216886)

Partners: University of Southampton; University College London; The University of Edinburgh; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Xerox SAS; Jozef Stefan Institute; Università degli Studi di Milano; University of Bristol; The University of Manchester; Helsingin Yliopisto; Fondation de l'Institut Dalle Molle d'Intelligence Artificielle Perceptive; Stichting Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica; Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Angewandten Forschung EV; Max-Planck Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften EV; Teknillinen Korkeakoulu; Bar Ilan University; Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6.

Duration: 1 March 2008 & 28 February 2013.

Description: PASCAL2 builds on the FP6 PASCAL Network of Excellence that has created a distributed institute pioneering principled methods of pattern analysis, statistical modeling, and computational learning. While retaining some of the structuring elements and mechanisms (such as the semi-annual Themes, and the Pump-Priming and Challenges programmes) of its predecessor, PASCAL2 refocuses the institute towards the emerging challenges created by the ever expanding applications of adaptive systems technology and their central role in the development of artificial cognitive systems of different scales. Learning technology is key to, for instance, making robots more versatile, effective and autonomous, and to endowing machines with advanced interaction capabilities. The PASCAL2 Joint Programme of Activities responds to these challenges not only through the research topics it addresses but also by engaging in technology transfer through an Industrial Club to effect rapid deployment of the developed technologies into a wide variety of applications. In addition, its Harvest sub- programme provides opportunities for close collaboration between academic and industry researchers. Other noteworthy outreach activities include curriculum development, brokerage of expertise, public outreach, and liaison with relevant R&D projects.

URL: http://www.pascal-network.org

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-216240)

Partners: Universität Stuttgart; Universität Graz; Sheffield Hallam University; Universität Karlsruhe; Scuola Superiore di Studi Universitari e di Perfezionamento Sant'anna; Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Angewandten Forschung EV; Institut Mikroelektronickych Aplikaci S.R.O.; Ubisense Limited; Almende BV; Ceske Vysoke Uceni Technicke V Praze.

Duration: 1 March 2008 – 28 February 2013.

Description: The main goal of the REPLICATOR project is to develop novel principles underlying robotic systems that consist of a super-large-scale swarm of small autonomous mobile micro-robots that are capable of self-assembling into self-sustaining, self-adjusting and self-learning large artificial organisms. Ultimately, these adaptive, robust, and scalable robotic organisms, endowed with rich sensing and actuating capabilities, will be used to build sensor networks operating autonomously in open-ended environments. The overall approach draws on evolutionary strategies for the development of appropriate functionalities and hardware structures.

URL: http://www.replicators.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-215190)

Partners: Politecnico di Milano; Azienda Ospedaliera di Verona; Università degli Studi di Siena; Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine; Prosurgics Limited; The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Technion - Israel Institute of Technology; Mazor Surgical Technologies Ltd; Technische Universität München; Universität Karlsruhe; Consulting Finanziamenti Unione Europea S.R.L.

Duration: 1 January 2008 – 31 December 2010.

Description: Robocast aims to develop an innovative and cost-effective system for aiding surgeons in keyhole neurosurgery. This modular system, allowing a reduced footprint, will be developed with two robots and one active bio- mimetic probe, able to cooperate among themselves in a biomimetic sensory-motor integrated framework. A gross positioning 3-axes robot will support a miniature parallel robot holding the probe to be introduced through a "keyhole" opening into the skull of the patient. Optical trackers, an imaging endoscope camera, and electromagnetic position and force sensors will extend robot perception by providing the control system with position and force feedback from the operating tools, and with visual information of the surgical field. It will have an intuitive haptic interface allowing surgeons to receive maximum feedback data with minimum extra effort on their side. The system will also be endowed with learning and interactive plan updating capabilities, based on a "risk atlas" reproducing a fuzzy representation of a brain atlas, and on context-based interpretation of surgeon commands.

URL: http://www.robocast.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-21612}

Partners: Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna; Università degli Studi di Parma; Universität zu Lübeck; Högskolan I Skövde; Middle East Technical University; Aberystwyth University.

Duration: 1 March 2008 – 28 February 2011.

Description: ROSSI aims at building robots endowed with sensorimotor and neural/computational mechanisms that allow them to: (a) flexibly manipulate and use objects in the environment, (b) use a simple form of language, i.e. nouns and verbs referring to objects and object-oriented actions, (c) use such concepts and verbal labels in social interaction with humans. Control mechanisms for these robots will be based on insights into the neural mechanisms underlying human concepts and language. Computational modelling of such mechanisms (in particular, canonical neurons and mirror neurons) will provide novel approaches to the grounding of robotic conceptualization and language. The project thus also contributes to a better understanding of the grounding of human conceptualization and language.

URL: http://www.rossiproject.net

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-217148)

Partners: Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Tel Aviv University; Consorci Institut d'Investigacions Biomediques August Pi I Sunyer; Universiteit van Amsterdam; Universität Osnabrück; Guger Technologies OEG; Robosoft SA.

Duration: 15 January 2008 – 31 December 2010.

Description: The Synthetic Forager project seeks to identify the neuronal, cognitive and behavioral principles underlying optimal foraging in rodents and to implement these principles in a real-world foraging artefact equipped with visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile sensors (Synthetic Forager, SF). The theoretical underpinning includes statistical analysis methods and game theory. The Distributed Adaptive Control architecture will be the integration framework. The SF will be evaluated in a number of benchmarks ranging from robot equivalents of rodent foraging tasks to simulated de-mining. Other potential applications of the technologies to be developed include: service robotics, search and rescue, terrestrial and planetary exploration, delivery systems, autonomous transportation, environmental monitoring, and Internet information analysis and retrieval.

URL: http://iua.upf.edu/sf

Funding: European Commission (FP7-ICT-216227)

Partners: Università degli Studi di Catania; Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz; Innovaciones Microelectronicas SL.

Duration: 1 February 2008 – 31 January 2011.

Description: SPARK II will develop, evaluate, optimise and generalise a new, insect brain inspired, computational model. The architecture will be hierarchical, based on parallel sensory-motor pathways, implementing reflex-driven basic behaviours. These will be enriched with higher and complex insect brain structural models and more physically-inspired nonlinear lattices. The latter will be able to generate "self-organizing" complex dynamics, while the former will reproduce relevant cognitive functions in insects such as attention-like processes, short- term memory and reward mechanisms. Both kinds of mechanism will work concurrently to generate cognitive behaviours at the output motor layer. The model will be applied to different robotics architectures, deployed in unstructured, cluttered and dynamically changing real-life environments, as well as to small robot swarms, leading to the emergence of cooperation among robots on tasks a single robot cannot carry out.

URL: http://www.spark2.diees.unict.it

Funding: European Commission (FP7-FET-)

Partners: Universität Stuttgart, Germany; Universität Graz, Austria; Vrije Universiteit, the Netherlands; Universität Karlsruhe, Germany; Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, Belgium; University of the West of England, UK; Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany; University of York, UK; Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium; Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique, France.

Duration: 1 February 2008 – 31 January 2013.

Description: The main focus of this project is to investigate and develop novel principles of adaptation and evolution for symbiotic multi-robot organisms based on bio-inspired approaches and modern computing paradigms. Symbrion is a platform for exploring artificial evolution and pervasive evolve-ability, that has extremely powerful computational on-board resources, support for artificial immunology and embryology, and a large number of light modules.

URL: http://www.symbrion.eu

Funding: European Commission (FP7-IST-210346)

Partners: Imperial College London, United Kingdom.

Duration: 1 September 2008 – 31 August 2013.

Description: The core 'Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping' (SLAM) approach of probabilistic map-building for mobile robots can be applied to real-time 3D motion estimation from the image stream from a single agile camera. We propose to take this line of research to its logical conclusion by investigating a paradigm of `Instant SLAM'. Can monocular visual SLAM be pushed far enough to estimate in real-time the motion of cameras potentially moving and accelerating very rapidly, turned on at arbitrary times and pointed at arbitrary scenes? Is it possible to develop a real-time vision algorithm, running on the standard processors of today or the near future, which can accurately track the motion of a camera attached to flying or bouncing robot, carried by a running person or even just thrown across a room?

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