Advances in Robotics Research: From Lab to Market

In this book Part I presents first an overview of the ECHORD++ project, with its mission and vision together with a detailed structure of its functionalities and instruments: Experiments, Robotic Innovation Facilities and Public end-user Driven Technology Innovation PDTI.

Chapter 1 explains how the project is born, the partners, the different instruments and the new concept of cascade funding projects. This novelty made ECHORD++ a special project along the huge number of research groups and consortia involved in the whole project. So far, it is the European funded project with more research team and partners involved in the robotic field.

In Chapter 2, one of the instruments in ECHORD++ is explained in detail: RIF. Robotic innovation facilities are a set of laboratories across Europe funded with the project with the goal of hosting consortia involved in any experiment that have special needs when testing their robotic research. In the chapter the three different and specific RIFs will be described and analyzed.

Chapter 3 explains an important instrument in ECHORD++: the Experiments. In this part, a big number of research groups have been involve in short time funded research projects. The chapter explains the management of such Experiments, from the call for participation, the candidate's selection, the monitoring, reviews and funding for each of the 36 experiments funded for Echord.

Chapter 4 is very special because it presents the innovation of funding public end-user driven technology, in particular, robotic technology. The robotic challenge is the key of such an instruments together with the management of the different consortia that participated competitively in the success of the robotic challenge proposed by a public entity, selected also with a very special and innovative process.

Present the scientific and technological results of the ECHORD++ instruments: Experiments, PDTI (Public and end user Driven Technological Innovation) and RIF (Robotic Innovation Facilities) Presents advances in robotics from the lab to the market in argricultural and food robotics, cognitive tools and workers, general purpose robotic co-workers, medical and rehabilitation robotics and urban robotics Includes a selection of the best scientific and technological projects of the experiments and PDTI Written by experts in the field

Inhalt
From the content: The European Coordination Hub for Open Robotics Development++: An Overview.- The Experiment instrument in ECHORD++: cascade funding for small-scale research projects for facilitating the introduction of robotics technology into industry.- Robotics Innovation Facilities.- Public end-users Driven Technological Innovation (PDTI) in Urban Scenarios.