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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TERRINet (The European Robotics Research Infrastructure Network)

Teaser

The European Robotics Research Infrastructures Network (TERRINet) Project aims at building a unique distributed and world-class Robotics Research Infrastructure with harmonised services and complementary capabilities where talented researchers from academia and industry will...

Summary

The European Robotics Research Infrastructures Network (TERRINet) Project aims at building a unique distributed and world-class Robotics Research Infrastructure with harmonised services and complementary capabilities where talented researchers from academia and industry will have access and will be able: to explore new ideas; to get in contact with and be inspired by leading and creative scientists, technologists, experts and industrial representatives; to share information and gain knowledge for boosting their scientific research and potential for technological innovation.
Europe is an undisputed leader in Robotics: it has nurtured a large community of researchers, educated many thousand students, created large and small companies, and established advanced facilities for conducting scientific research and contributing to technological innovation. However, despite of significant efforts and achievements, the existing Robotics facilities are not fully synchronized, and lack common procedures, thus hampering their enormous potential for world class research and innovation. Indeed, creating a Robotics Research Infrastructure is realistic, timely and essential in the current and future landscape of Robotics.
During a four-year project lifetime, TERRINet will provide harmonised access, use and sharing of platforms, knowledge, technologies and resources (both human and technical) to different groups of users, irrespective of location. TERRINet will set up an integrated infrastructure managed as a whole, in response to the need of European Robotics researchers.
The plan of TERRINet is to accomplish its vision by providing not only an organised and well-orchestrated set of facilities, but also databases, tools and methodologies which will remain operational after the end of the project, so to provide a long-term service to Robotics science and industry in Europe and worldwide.

Work performed

The most relevant result achieved to date within the TERRINet Project is the implementation - in less than 1 year - of a Starting Community of Robotics Research Infrastructures sharing platforms, knowledge and facilities in several robotics fields.
This Community is composed by thirteen Robotics institutions from seven EU countries and one Associated Country (Switzerland), possessing different and complementary expertise and offering 15 high quality facilities with 90+ platforms in various fields of Robotics.
The activities carried out to date include i) the management of the Project and of the fruitful interactions among the partners (i.e, organization and participation to periodic meetings), ii) the regulation and the management of the Trans-national accesses, iii) the dissemination of the Project and its results, iv) the establishment of two relevant committees, that are the ELES (Ethical, Legal, Economic and Social) committee and the TTTC (TERRINet Technology Transfer Committee), v) the selection of an independent Ethics Expert (EE) in charge of the WP10 “Ethics requirements” and vi) the identification and the setting up of the Data Management Plan.
The Consortium established a set of harmonized access procedures and guidelines to select users through a Call-based procedure, and drafted the so called TERRINet Handbook (D2.2). The TERRINet Consortium also defined the evaluation criteria, and built a database of evaluators expert in several robotics fields able to assess the proposals with fairness and impartiality. The TERRINet Consortium prepared a set of useful documents to provide users with in preparation of their access and the appropriate documents to manage the access (Annexes to the D2.2). Furthermore, with the support of the EE, a Research Ethics Approval Procedure was established to assess the applications to the Calls with respect to the Ethics aspects.
One Open Call has been launched and 21 proposals were selected among 34 applications to access the infrastructures with the financial support of TERRINet. A “permanent” Open Call has been now opened, in order to provide access to selected users more frequently and on a shorter notice.
The TTTC is tailored at providing advice and coaching to researchers in the TERRINet laboratories, at supporting them to help preparing applications to grants or to create start-ups. The ELES is concerned with the analysis of the level of robotic researchers’ and technicians’ awareness on Ethical, Legal, Economic and Social issues.
The dissemination results achieved can be summarized as the fulfilment of an extensive dissemination plan tailored at disseminating the Project and its offerings to as much as possible stakeholders interested in Robotics. A very effective advertising campaign was tailored at involving EU13 countries.

Final results

The implementation of correct experimental methodologies in Robotics has been hampered to date by the fragmentation of the existing infrastructures. This has also been impeding both scientific progress and result exploitation in most cases, with rare exceptions of some excellence centres.
Thus, the overall result pursued in TERRINet is to create the first European Robotic Research Infrastructure Network, with harmonized and facilitated access, which is per se a relevant progress beyond state of the art that the TERRINet Project aims at reaching.
The plan of TERRINet is to accomplish its vision by providing seamlessly integrated facilities, middleware, databases, tools and methodologies, which will remain operational after the end of the project, so to provide a long-term service to the Robotics science and industry in the EU and worldwide. This will be the first decisive step towards the future consolidation of the Starting Community of science-based Robotics into an Advanced Community.
The expected results of the TERRINet Project are listed as follows:
1. to build a European Robotics “super-facility” comprised of a distributed network of Robotics facilities and platforms, supported by a shared common framework; it will serve as a multi-disciplinary, trans-national and unique environment to facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas and sharing of excellence scientific research where users can take advantage, with a widespread access, of a number of forefront research services and methodologies;
2. to enable different users (researchers, entrepreneurs, students, …) to obtain easy access to various platforms at providers’ infrastructures with formalised and structured common procedures and standards to fully exploit their potential and multiply their impact on research and innovation;
3. to provide a multi-disciplinary and trans-national environment able to facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas and sharing of research results by providing the necessary best practices and tool for research reproducibility and solutions;
4. to launch joint training programmes for higher education and training of researchers, for attracting young researchers and students (with particular attention to female participation) towards Robotics science and engineering careers.
Impact on Technology: acceleration of innovation take-up and industrial exploitation of research results, including the roadmap-based application research performed under SPARC guidance.
Impact on Society: materialization of a new vision of Society and Welfare based on new Robotic Science and Technology.
Impact on Economy: fostering of a new wave of economic growth in Europe, by capitalizing on the European solid tradition in manufacturing.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.terrinet.eu.