• Electronic submission of experiment proposals is now closed. The deadline was October 1st 2010 17:00 Brussels time.

Based on a decision by the European Commission, legal entities (e.g. research institutions, universities or companies) acceding to the ECHORD Grant Agreement related to Call 1 cannot participate in this Call, i.e., organisations which were successful in Call 1 are not allowed to submit proposals. Even in case of large organisations, such as Fraunhofer, CNR or CNRS, this means that not any other institute from these organisations can apply for funding in the 3rd Call if there were successful proposals in the first Call by any institute of that organisation.

Legal entities succesful in call 2 which have not acceded to the Grand agreement yet are entitled to participate in this call.

In the context of ECHORD, small-scale projects, so-called “experiments”, will be conducted, which will use state-of-the art robotic equipment. An experiment is a small technical research project. Depending on the experiments the equipment providers can either just sell the robotic equipment to an experiment or be part of the experiment’s consortium.

To outline the scope of the research work three scenarios have been defined that represent the expected use of state-of-the-art robot technologies in the near future: the human robot co-worker scenario, the hyper-flexible cells scenario and the cognitive factory scenario.

This call for experiment proposals targets the third scenario, cognitive factory. However, proposals focused on the other two scenarios may be submitted. Research institutions, universities, enterprises and robot manufacturers are asked to submit experiment proposals.

A list of suitable equipment offered by manufacturers, along with terms and conditions of providing this equipment, is available here (login required).