As robots are entering unstructured environments with a large variety of tasks, they will need to quickly acquire new abilities to solve them. Humans do so very effectively through a variety of methods of knowledge transfer – demonstration, verbal explanation, writing, the Internet. In robotics, enabling the transfer of skills and software between robots, tasks, research groups, and application domains will be a game changer for scaling up the robot abilities.

euROBIN therefore proposes a threefold strategy: First, leading experts from the European robotics and AI research community will tackle the questions of transferability in four main scientific areas: 1) boosting physical interaction capabilities, to increase safety and reliability, as well as energy efficiency 2) using machine learning to acquire new behaviors and knowledge about the environment and the robot and to adapt to novel situations 3) enabling robots to represent, exchange, query, and reason about abstract knowledge 4) ensuring a human-centric design paradigm, that takes the needs and expectations of humans into account, making AI-enabled robots accessible, usable and trustworthy.

Second, the relevance of the scientific outcomes will be demonstrated in three application domains that promise to have substantial impact on industry, innovation, and civil society in Europe. 1) robotic manufacturing for a circular economy 2) personal robots for enhanced quality of life 3) outdoor robots for sustainable communities. Advances are made measurable by collaborative competitions.

Finally, euROBIN will create a sustainable network of excellence to foster exchange and inclusion. Software, data and knowledge will be exchanged over the EuroCore repository, designed to become a central platform for robotics in Europe.