Bio: Ingmar leads the Applied Artificial Intelligence Lab at Oxford University and is a founding director of the Oxford Robotics Institute. His research aims to enable machines to robustly act and interact in the real world – for, with, and alongside humans. With a significant track-record of contributions in machine perception and decision-making, Ingmar and his team are thinking about the next generation of robots that are flexible enough in their scene understanding, physical interaction and skill acquisition to learn and carry out new tasks. His research is guided by a vision to create machines which constantly improve through experience. In 2014 Ingmar co-founded Oxbotica, a multi-award winning provider of mobile autonomy software solutions. He currently serves as an Amazon Scholar.

Bio: ARIANNA MENCIASSI (IEEE Fellow) received the M.Sc. degree in physics from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in 1995, and the Ph.D. degree in bioengineering from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Pisa, Italy, in 1999. She is currently a Professor of Bioengineering and Biomedical Robotics with the SSSA, where she is a Team Leader of the “Surgical Robotics & Allied Technologies” area with The BioRobotics Institute. She has been Coordinator of the Ph.D. in BioRobotics since 2018, and she was appointed in 2019 as a Vice-Rector of SSSA. Her research interests include surgical robotics, microrobotics for biomedical applications, biomechatronic artificial organs, and smart and soft solutions for biomedical devices. She pays a special attention to the combination between traditional robotics, targeted therapy, and wireless solution for therapy (e.g., ultrasound- and magnetic-based). Prof. Menciassi served in the Editorial Board of the IEEE-ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, and was a Topic Editor of the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems. She has been co-chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Surgical Robotics and Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL ROBOTICS AND BIONICS until the end of 2022. She is currently a co-Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS and of the APL of Bioengineering; she is also serving in the Editorial Board of the Soft Robotics journal. 

Areas mainly addressed: Robotics and AI/Big Data Value 

Main questions to be answered: 

· What are the (grand/inspiring) challenges at the cross-roads of AI, Data and Robotics Europe should invest in 

WS Description: An effective European AI, Data and Robotics ecosystem is a necessity to provide a powerful response to many of the challenges Europe and the world are facing, and valorize the opportunities it presents .   Much of this power comes through synergies and collaboration between disciplines and communities. A powerful mechanism to achieve convergence are shared challenges and objectives.  Due to the omnipresence of AI, Data and Robotics technologies, and the complexity of the value-chains involved, defining such challenges is easy and difficult at the same time. Easy in the sense that technological advancements in ADR promise new opportunities when applied in nearly all sectors and application domains. Difficult in the sense that prioritization isn’t obvious. In this workshop we explore 4 (grand) – challenges (archetypes) and investigate their potential and what implementing these challenges would require in terms of ecosystem and support. 

Intended outcome: List of inspiring challenges at the cross-roads of AI, Data and Robotics 

Draft Agenda (90 minutes)

Presentation 10-pager + Qs (30 mins)

Break-out groups (45 mins – 15 min per question)

Restitution  (15 mins – 4 min per group)

Break-out groups (topic / chairs)

Break-out groups are focused around an archetype challenge. They have a chair that minimally prepares the contours of the challenges, and animates the discussion in the break-out group. The break-out groups are composed of the people that attend the session.  Around 7 persons per group is advisable.  The break-out groups are populated randomly with participants to the session. The objective of the session is get a dialogue going between the various stakeholders and their interests (i.e. the challenge in that sense is secondary, but input to the challenge at hand is valuable and will be taken into account in the development of the SRIDA)  

• Socio-economic – zero carbon emissions (Christophe Leroux/Nabil Belbachir)
• Application/sector oriented – to be defined e.g automotive  (David Bisset) 
• Infrastructure – AI on demand platform (Barry O’Sullivan/Gabriel Gonzales)
• Scientific/technological Challenge – to be defined (Fredrik Heintz/Jean-Baptiste Mouret) 

Organisers: 

· Jozef Geurts, jozef.geurts@inria.fr, Inria, Collaborative workshop with Adra, Adra-e, AI4Europe, euRobin,

Main question: Who will be the 2023 winner of the euRobotics Technology transfer award?

WS Description: Technology transfer is key to keeping European industry at the forefront of global competition – and nowhere more so than in automation and robotics. That’s why euRobotics places such an emphasis on technology transfer and demonstrates this via the euRobotics Technology Transfer Award. The session is dedicated to the finalists who applied for this award. Each finalist or finalist’s team will present their innovation or solution, followed by a short Q&A session. At the end of the session, the TTA winner will be announced and receives the award.

1.)    General information: Track -> Awards; Date and time: 14 March, 13:55-15:15; Location: Main Stage – Floor 1

2.)    Agenda:

a.       Welcome and Introduction: 5 min

b.       Finalists‘ presentations: 10 min plus 5 min discussion each

c.       Conclusion: 5 min

3.)    Finalists presenting during the workshop:

a.       Thiusius R. Savarimuthu, Søren A. Just, Johannes Schäferhoff, Johannes C. A. Jørgensen, Anders B.H. Christensen, Martin Hubel, Dan Jakobsen, Trine Winther (ROPCA): ARTHUR –  A robotic ultrasound imaging platform designed to scan the finger joints and wrists of patients

b.       Tom Walters, Sarra Mander, Alison Bosher, Ray King, Kieran Southward, Ben Scott-Robinson, Sam Watson Jones (Small Robot Co): Tom – Mapping & Monitoring robot

c.       Michael Ortner, Massimo Ferri, Christof Eberst, Mikko Sallinen (Convergent Information Technologies GmbH/CIT), Kristina Dachtler, Alexander Schiendorfer (THI): ML4AUTOMAPPPS – Machine Learning for AUTOMAPPPS

d.       Roman Weitschat, Dimitri Butsch, Jan Cremer (Leverage Robotics GmbH): Leverage Robotics ToolCubes – Passive Tooling for Highest Flexibility in Robotic Multi-Task-Applications

e.       Paul Maroldt, Constantin Dresel, Roman Hölzl, Julian Högner, Tilman Tschoeke (Robco): Robco

f.        Pieter Blok, Eldert van Henten, Toon Tielen, Karl Thomas (Wageningen University & research (WUR)): The Broccovator – Effortlessly harvesting broccoli with the power of robotics

4.)    Jury Members:

a.       Rainer Bischoff, General Manager Germany, Intrinsic, an Alphabet Company

b.       Herman Bruyninckx, Full Professor, KU Leuven, TU Eindhoven, Flanders Make

c.       Fariba Khatami, Manager Marketing and Communications, VDMA Robotics and Automation

d.       Werner Kraus, Head of Robotics, Fraunhofer IPA

e.       Nicola Tomatis, CEO, BlueBotics SA

f.        Georg von Wichert, Head of Autonomous Systems and Control, Siemens

5.)    Further information: https://eu-robotics.net/call-for-eurobotics-technology-transfer-award/

6.)    Organiser: Dr. Werner Kraus, wek@ipa.fhg.de, Fraunhofer IPA

Areas mainly addressed: cross-cutting 

Main questions to be answered: 

· How to revive our topic group, attract new members and increase visibility? 

· What is the SOTA, especially in Europe? 

· Which is the current TRL and when are industrial/real world applications foreseen? 

WS Description: Biological cognitive agents are naturally resilient and adaptable, rapidly learn about their environment and their role in it, and make approximately optimal decisions in highly uncertain scenarios. These are all open challenges for robotics systems, and the field is seeing renewed interest in exporting findings from cognitive sciences into software and hardware implementations. The workshops aims at (1) critically reviewing the current state-of-the-art on bio/brain-inspired robotics, from both, an academic and industry perspective, (2) discussing actions needed to strengthen the Topic Group and (3) assigning corresponding tasks to all active members and interested colleagues. 

Intended outcome: Workshop discussion topics of common interest, success stories, use cases, etc, Workshop expected to create a roadmap or white paper, Workshop on recent developments in technology or applications 

Approach: This TG needs to be re-established more or less from scratch. Therefore the workshop will be about to get to know each other and to agree on a common roadmap for the future path of the TG. The agenda will hence consist of only brief presentations and open discussions, supported by digital tools. There will be a moderated discussion on roadmapping activities and the operation and future development of the TG. 

Contributors: Confirmed Speakers: Poramate Manoonpong (SDU), Silvia Tolu (DTU), Martijn Wisse (TU Delft), Stathis Kagioulis (University of Sussex), Michael Mangan (University of Sheffield & Opteran Technologies) 

Organisers: 

· Florian Röhrbein, florian.roehrbein@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de, Chemnitz University of Technology

· EfstathiosKagioulis, E.Kagioulis@sussex.ac.uk, University of Sussex 

· Mathias Brandstötter, m.brandstoetter@fh-kaernten.at, Carinthia University of Applied Science

Main questions to be answered: 

· How can we ensure to capture and anticipate future skills required by the roboticists of the future? 

· How do we guarantee that industries, researchers, governments, and educators agree on learning themes, structures, and standards? 

· How can we promote more free and open source access to learning and training in robotics? 

WS Description: The robotic industry is expected to grow significantly over the coming years and disrupt the global workplace. In order to reduce the impact on job losses and maximise the benefits robots will introduce to society, the current and future workforce need to be prepared. The engineers of the future will need a broad and diverse skill set and an interdisciplinary network in order to solve present and future challenges and create new opportunities. Therefore, an effective system for training new engineers and technicians (and retraining those already in the workforce) needs to be established to promote a thriving economy. Such system needs to encourage open-source and free learning in order to reduce barriers to education and inequalities. A strong synergy between industry, research, educators and governments to agree on themes, structures, and standards will also be required. 

Intended outcome: Workshop covering material new to ERF that the Robotics community should engage with, Workshops engaging non-roboticists to understand needs/goals (policy, commercial, technical), Workshop expected to create a roadmap or white paper, Workshop discussion topics of common interest, success stories, use cases, etc, Information about community involvement and services offered (e.g. DIHs, open calls, platforms, …) 

Approach: We will have presentations from some RTOs, Universities, and Industries who will show their work around training future roboticists. We will then have a discussion with the audiance capturing ideas on how we can anticipate the future required skills and how to best train the future robotic workforce. A report will be generated at the end 

Contributors: Gianmarco Pisanelli – Technical Lead in Novel Robotics at AMRC – Will work as Chair of the workshop – confirmed 

Gurpreet Ghataore – Senior Research Engineer at MTC – Speaker – confirmed 

Roel Pieters – Associate Professor at Tampere University – Speaker – confirmed 

Kurt Nielsen – Director Of Technology & Deputy Head Of Division at Danish Technological Institute – Speaker – confirmed 

Nuno Miguel Gonçalves – Innovation Manager at INCM and Assistant Professor at University of Coimbra – Speaker – confirmed

Organisers: 

· Gianmarco Pisanelli, g.pisanelli@amrc.co.uk, AMRC

Project cluster relation:

APRIL [DT-FOF-12-2019] https://aprilproject.eu/ 

SOFTMANBOT [H2020-FoF-11] http://softmanbot.eu/ 

Decathlon [Tissue manipulation use-case] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c72TGHsyfOo 

CISUTAC [GA 10106037 

Areas mainly addressed: Agile Production 

Main questions to be answered: 

· How intelligent and autonomous should the robot be to be integrated in industrial plants and how is the current state of robots in industrial plants dealing with soft materials manipulation? 

· How intelligent and autonomous should the robot be to be integrated in industrial plants with respect to the current state of robots dealing with soft materials manipulation? 

· What is the trade-off between tailored design of robotic grippers and the adaptive intelligent control? 

WS Description: This workshop proposes future potential technology to handle flexible and deformable materials, in order to reduce labour-intensive production processes. Four different projects (APRIL, SoftManBot, CISUTAC and Masterly) will be presented from an academic and industrial point of view. The projects are at different stages of development, and they will show 11 different applied solutions, and 4 different novel approaches. All the projects are built on three main pillars: generic robotic perception system, multi-sensor control and planning platform and smart dexterous grippers. The workshop will focus on deformation of soft materials, manipulation operation and presence of human operators in the loop. Finally, the high quality speakers and the following discussions will bring in new ideas, which will help the attendees to widen their vision about the soft material manipulation trend. 

Intended outcome: Novel format (e.g. interactive matchmaking session for technologies and applications), Workshop discussion topics of common interest, success stories, use cases, etc 

Approach: 80min-long workshop 

5min WS introduction 

15min APRIL project + ASINCAR food packaging Use-Case 

15min SoftManBot project + Decathlon Use-Case 

10min CISUTAC project 

10min MASTERLY project 

30min Moderated discussion 

5min Conclusions 

Contributors: Francesco Rea (male, Junior), Researcher in Contact cognitive architecture for interactive technologies, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Academic, Confirmed, APRIL project presentation 

Alice Tori (female), Vicepresident of innovation and development, OSAI-AS, Invited, electrical case study 

Dr Mohammad Alkhatib (male, Junior), Researcher, SIGMA Clermont University (FR), Academic, Confirmed – SoftmanBot Presentation 

Pierpaolo Rotondi (male), Decathlon Produzione Italia (IT), Large Industry, Confirmed – Decathlon use-case presentation 

Alberto Landini (male), Stam s.r.l, SME, confirmed – CISUTAC presentation 

Dr Nikos Dimitropoulos (male, junior), LMS – Laboratory for Manufacturing System and Automation – University of Patras (EL), Academic, Confirmed – MASTERLY presentation 

Dr Andreas Mueller (male), Johannes Kepler University (AU), Academic, Confirmed – Moderator 

Dr Ferdinando Cannella (male), Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Academic, Confirmed –Conclusions 

Further information: APRIL https://aprilproject.eu/ 

SOFTMANBOT http://softmanbot.eu/ 

Decathlon [Tissue manipulation use-case] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c72TGHsyfOo 

CISUTAC https://www.cisutac.eu/ 

MASTERLY (the webs 

Organisers: 

· Ferdinando Cannella, ferdinando.cannella@iit.it, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

· Andreas Mueller, a.mueller@jku.at, Johannes Kepler University (JKU) 

· GabrieleMarchello, gabriele.marchello@iit.it, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT)

Areas mainly addressed: Maintenance and Inspection, Robotics and AI/Big Data Value, Autonomy, Collaborative Robots and cloud robotics, Control technology including virtualisation and edge/cloud, Robotics for nuclear industry 

Main questions to be answered: 

· What robotic applications are perspective in future nuclear industry ?dustry 

· What properties should have robots for the new nuclear industry ? 

· How perspective is autonomy or AI in the loop in robotics for nuclear industry ? 

WS Description: This workshop supports the Harsh Environment Robotics TG, following successful workshops at ERF 2016 – 2022 (64 participants in 2022). 

There is a strong interest from again growing nuclear industry to extend use of robots in extreme environments where it is unsafe to use human workers. This couples together a very wide range of robotics research with a strong industrial economic demand, and major societal and ethical importance. 

Our motivation is to continue the strong ERF communication between roboticists and the senior representatives and policy makers of nuclear industry. 

Cases like Chernobyl and Fukushima, are showing that abilities of present-day robots are still significantly limited. 

That is why sharing of experience about successful solutions, information about perspective new technologies and identification of new gaps for research will be the main outcome of the WS. 

Intended outcome: Novel format (e.g. interactive matchmaking session for technologies and applications), Workshop discussion topics of common interest, success stories, use cases, etc, Workshop covering material new to ERF that the Robotics community should engage with, Workshop expected to create a roadmap or white paper, Workshop on recent developments in technology or applications 

Approach: WS is planned for 80min 

The workshop will start with 3-4 presentations . The aim of these presentations is: 

– to identify current problems in nuclear industry which could be solved by new robotic technologies (presented by expert from nuclear industry) 

– to show some ways of up to date robotic solutions (presenters from industrial and research institutions) 

– to show possibilities of new robotic technologies comprising AI, multisensoric perception, IOT, etc. 

This should act as „food for thought“ and start off the discussion. 

Then audience will be split into the following subgroups according to application areas, i.e. newly buildt nuclear power plants (NPPs), decommissioned NPPs and accidents in NPPs. 

Each subgroup will put together the main problems and gaps for future research and also for MAR preparation. 

The following panel discussion will go deeper into the problem and provide certain synergy and cross fertilisation of subgroups. We will also utilize the possibility to bring together speakers and audience from both industry and academia/research via internal communication in our TG. 

The last part of discussion will be dedicated to ideas for the next activities of TG „Harsh Environment Robotics“ 

Agenda: 

– 00:00 – 00:05 Introduction by the moderators 

– 00:05 – 00:45 Short presentations 

– 00:45 – 00:55 Subgroups discussion 

– 00:55 – 01:15 Panel discussion 

– 01:15 – 01:20 Conclusions for the roadmapping process under Horizon Europe and the next activities of our TG 

Contributors: Joel Vanden Bosch (Cybernetix) – confirmed 

Rustam Stolkin (University of Birmingham) – confirmed 

Steve Shackleford (National Nuclear Lab) – invited 

Peter Gerhart (JAVYS) – confirmed 

Organisers: 

· Ladislav Vargovcik, ladislav.vargovcik@tuke.sk, Technical University of Kosice

· Rustam Stolkin, R.Stolkin@bham.ac.uk, University of Birmingham 

· JoelVanden Bosch, jvandenbosch@alsymex-alcen.com, ALSYMEX 

· Stephen Shackleford, stephen.g.shackleford@uknnl.com, National Nuclear Laboratory