In 2017, the European Union co-funded 23 new robotics projects from the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for research and innovation. 19 of these resulted from the robotics work programme, and 2 projects resulted from the Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research and the bioeconomy part of Horizon 2020. One project resulted from the Factory of the Future call for proposals and one project comes from the H2020 programme European Research Infrastructures. The robotics work programme implements the robotics strategy developed by SPARC, the Public-Private Partnership for Robotics in Europe (see the Strategic Research Agenda).

The new projects represent a wide variety of research and innovation themes: from healthcare, transportation, industrial and agri-food robotics and inspection to search and rescue robotics. Some deal with complex safety matters on the frontier where robots meet people, to ensure that no one comes to harm. Others will create a sustainable ecosystem in the robotics community, setting up common platforms supporting robotics development. We also have two new collaborative projects on robotics competitions in a smart city setting and one dealing with Ethics, Legal, Societal and Economy as well as benchmarking and standardisation,

The research and innovation projects focus on a wide variety of capabilities, such as navigation, human-robot interaction, recognition, cognition and handling. Many of these abilities can be transferable to other fields as well.

At the European Robotics Forum 2018, on 13-15 March 2018, in Tampere, Finland, all projects presented themselves during dedicated workshops. euRobotics is publishing video interviews with several projects, so that you can find out more about their activities.

We are looking forward to following the new projects and accompanying them to bring benefits to Europe’s citizens and economy.