Global Research Infrastructures in Robotics: Challenges and Opportunities

The Workshop "Global Research Infrastructures in Robotics: Challenges and Opportunities" will be held on September 27, 2021, at 16:10 –18:10 CEST, as an interactive session fully online, in the context of the 2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
The main organizer of the international workshop is Paolo Dario, full Professor at The BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (contact: paolo.dario@santannapisa.it).
The co-organizer is Rossella Raso, Research Assistant at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (contact: rossella.raso@santannapisa.it).

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September 27, 2021, 16:10–18:10 CEST
Interactive session fully online on the gCon virtual conferencing system
Please, register here to get access to gCon: https://www.iros2021.org/registration

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ABSTRACT

This Workshop is about the concept of Robotics Research Infrastructures (RRIs) and the opportunities they offer to a variety of Robotics researchers to access a set of world-class robotic platforms and to get in contact with experts in these fields in order to learn, train, break barriers between Academy and Industry and to create an international network that will last. Furthermore, among the advantages of a GRI, there is the possibility of exploring extensive Benchmarks, that imply to investigate Repeatability and Reproducibility.
Research Infrastructures (RIs) are facilities providing resources and services for research communities to conduct research and foster innovation. RIs are widespread all over the world since the policy plan for technological development and economic growth of the most advanced countries in the world, i.e., USA, Europe, UAE, China, Singapore, Japan, etc., have comprised the establishment and the consolidation of RIs as a top priority.
RIs have generated great impact on innovation and they are crucial for the Open Innovation model at the supply side of new knowledge. To establish wide collaborations among RIs at international level is of paramount importance to maximize the collective impact of investments and to address global challenges in several fields.
Among the initiatives to promote such cooperation, we mention the International Conference on Research Infrastructures (ICRI), which brings together experts in the development, financing and exploitation of research infrastructures across all disciplines and areas of research to discuss how to best enable excellent research, technology development and innovation in all sectors of society.
According to the Global Research Infrastructures (GRIs) Framework, a living document that builds on the continuous work of the Group of Senior Officials (GSO) and approved by the G8 Science Ministers in July 2013, GRIs should address the most pressing global research challenges, i.e. those frontiers of knowledge where a global-critical-mass effort to achieve progress is required. Science, technology, innovation, and advanced research training goals should be fully integrated throughout the infrastructure plans from their early development.
The concept of RIs matches very well with the field of Robotics. Robotics has been bringing forth radical innovations and unique impact for decades in many sectors (manufacturing, automation, medicine, …) in Europe and worldwide, evolving from a predominantly engineering-oriented domain to a transdisciplinary area, according to the paradigm “Science for Robotics and Robotics for Science”. Europe is an acknowledged leader in Robotics and the establishment of a RI and/or a GRI in Robotics was indeed recommended by the ESFRI Roadmap to address scientific and technological challenges in Europe and worldwide by leveraging on solutions and methods introduced by Robotic Science.
The European Commission has identified Robotics as a strategic sector for industrial growth and services to citizens, and as one of the key drivers of digital innovation. Therefore, after big efforts, a Starting Community composed of 13 top-quality Robotics institutions from 7 EU countries (including the UK) plus 1 Associated Country (Switzerland), possessing different and complementary expertise, and offering high-quality facilities in various fields of Robotics, launched the TERRINet Project in 2017.
TERRINet is a European Research Infrastructure Network of stakeholders in Robotics from both Academia and Industry offering fully covered and free-of-charge Trans-National Access (TNA) to high-quality robotics platforms, excellent research services, and training to a variety of selected users in Europe and worldwide on an Open Call-based mechanism. TERRINet is a pilot case, suitable to be scaled up at a world level, and its scope matches quite well the scope of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) and of many RAS Technical Committees.