While robots today master repetitive tasks in controlled settings, they still fundamentally struggle with novel tasks, changing conditions or unstructured environments. Widening demographic shifts, a growing labor shortage, and rising competitiveness urgently drive the need for robotics systems that can tackle physical tasks reliably while safeguarding safety and sovereignty.
The Challenge:
Develop full-stack robot platforms that handle complex physical tasks in real environments or novel robotic hardware components with breakthrough capabilities.
The challenge covers two complementary paths: Track 1 ‘Integrated Platforms’ challenges teams to orchestrate sub-components into complete multi-purpose robots which can tackle complex, commercial use cases. Track 2 ‘Hardware Components’ focuses on novel hardware such as gripping systems, sensors, or joints that achieve a radical performance leap over the state of the art.
Both tracks start by separately testing their approaches in lab environments (Stage 1) prior to moving into the real world (Stage 2), then focus on integration and interoperability into one system (Stage 3) before working on interoperability between different systems (Stage 4). As the challenge progresses, teams are expected to collaborate with complementary challenge participants or external partners to foster the development of standards. This sets the foundation for an interoperable ecosystem, enabling teams (and later customers) to tackle their selected use cases with the best-suited hardware and models under actual operating conditions, moving robotics from the lab into real-world scenarios.
The primary focus is on terrestrial, physically interactive applications in industrial and societal settings such as logistics, care support and construction.
The challenge runs for 36 months across four sequential stages. A jury of recognized experts supports SPRIND in selecting and evaluating participating teams. SPRIND provides financial backing as an individual fixed-price contract based on the team's cost estimate, offering up to €7,200,000 per team.
