The main objective of AERIAL-CORE is the development of core technology modules and an integrated aerial cognitive robotic system that will have unprecedented capabilities on the operational range and safety in the interaction with people, or Aerial Co-Workers (ACW), for applications such as the inspection and maintenance of large infrastructures. The project will integrate aerial robots with different characteristics to meet the requirements of: (1) Long range (several kilometres) and local very accurate (subcentimetre) inspection of the infrastructure capability; (2) Maintenance activities based on aerial manipulation involving force interactions; and (3) Aerial co-working safely and efficiently helping human workers in inspection and maintenance. AERIAL-CORE technology modules will be based on Cognitive Mechatronics and apply cognitive capabilities to aerial morphing in order to combine long range endurance and hovering for local observations, manipulation involving force interactions, and co-working with humans. The project will develop: (1) Cognitive functionalities for aerial robots including perception based on novel sensors, such as event cameras, and data fusion techniques, learning, reactivity, fast on-line planning, and teaming; (2) Aerial platforms with morphing capabilities, to save energy in long range flights and perform a very accurate inspection; (3) Cognitive aerial manipulation capabilities, including manipulation while flying, while holding with one limb, and while hanging or perching to improve accuracy and develop greater forces; (4) Cognitive safe aerial robotic co-workers capable of physical interaction with people; and (5) Integrated aerial robotic system for the inspection and maintenance of large infrastructures. The system will be demonstrated in electrical power system inspection and maintenance, which is an application with a huge economic impact that also has implications in the safety of workers and in wildlife conservation.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) represents a significant proportion of malignant diseases. Interventions are often carried out during the latter stages of development, leading to low patient survival rates and poor quality of life. In 2022 a European Commission report stated that “colonoscopy-based screening has higher sensitivity than testing for blood in stool, but it is less acceptable to participants”. At the same time, effective methods to treat polyps in the colon are limited. Current approaches are often associated with unsafe oncological margins and high complication rates, requiring life-changing surgery. EndoTheranostics will usher in a new era for screening colonoscopy, advancing the frontiers of medical imaging and robotics. A tip-growing or eversion robot with a sleeve-like structure will be created to extend deep into hollow spaces while perceiving the environment through multimodal imaging and sensing. It will also act as a conduit to transfer miniaturised instruments to the remote site within the colon for diagnosis and therapy (theranostics). With these capabilities, the system will be able to offer: 1. painless colon cleansing in preparation for endoscopy; 2. real-time polyp detection and tissue characterisation through AI-assisted multimodal imaging; 3. effective removal of polyps by conveying a “miniature mobile operating chamber” equipped with microsurgical tools to the target through the lumen of the eversion robot. The unique technical and clinical challenges will be tackled by the PIs, each bringing complementary skills, backed by their institutions with wide expertise and exceptional facilities. The synergy and added value evident in this team will lead to breakthroughs not possible through independent research. The outcomes of EndoTheranostics will revolutionise the theranostics of CRC, impacting the quality of life of millions of individuals. Ultimately it will launch a new era for endoluminal intervention with applications beyond medicine.

HYFLIERS will develop two prototypes for the first worldwide hybrid aerial/ground robot with a hyper-redundant lightweight robotic articulated arm equipped with an inspection sensor, together with supporting services for efficient and safe inspection in industrial sites. Energy savings will be achieved by minimizing the time of flight and by performing the inspection while attached to the pipe. To ensure accurate positioning, guidance, landing and rolling on constrained surfaces such as pipes, the robot will rely on a control system also integrating environment perception, particularly for landing on the pipes, and aerodynamic control taking into account aerodynamic effects of the pipes. The system will also have multi-media interfaces for teleoperation, automatic collision detection and avoidance; a trajectory planning system that will take into account aerodynamic effects in addition to kinematic and dynamic models; and a mission planning system to optimize the use of the robot in the inspection. The technology results will be validated in the inspection of pipes, which is a very relevant short-term application. HYFLIERS will decrease the cost and risks of current human inspection in production plants, such as oil and gas, where it is estimated that about 50 000 pipe thickness measurement points are needed within a 3 to 5 years interval. HYFLIERS will eliminate the risks of accidental falls and the cost associated to the use of man-lifts, cranes, scaffold or rope access, which is many orders of magnitude larger than the measurement cost by itself. Taking into account that about 60% to 75% of inspection costs in this type of facilities is dedicated to ultrasonic thickness measurements, the project will concentrate on these measurements. The results of the project could be also applied to other industrial scenarios, such as power generation plants.

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. The vision of euROBIN is a European ecosystem of robots that share their data and knowledge and exploit their diversity to jointly learn to perform the endless variety of tasks in human environments.