Apply AI: Next-Generation Agile and Intelligent Robotics Platforms for Industrial and Service Applications (Partnership in AI, Data and Robotics) (RIA)

Expected Outcome

The Apply AI Strategy foresees acceleration pipelines to speed up the adoption of AI-powered robotics and ensure continuity from research and innovation to deployment. By developing next-generation platforms as common building blocks, this topic will support these pipelines across multiple use cases.

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Novel robot design technique, materials and control techniques for flexible and meticulous manipulation of robots in unstructured environment, with high autonomy and in collaboration with humans.
• New generation of flexible and safe robot systems validated in key application sectors defined in the Apply AI strategy[1], developed with a human-centric approach.

Scope

Dynamic real-world environments require a new generation of agile, cost-effective, and intelligent, and modular robot platforms able to interact in safe and effective manner with humans across diverse industrial and service applications. These systems should be easily reconfigurable and adaptable, enabling deployment in real-time, high-performance operational contexts with minimal integration effort.

To ensure relevance and uptake, solutions must address industrial demands for high speed, precision, and reliability, enabling deployment in real-time, high-performance operational contexts.

Emphasis should be placed on the development of robotic systems that can be seamlessly integrated into existing industrial and service workflows, enhancing productivity and operational flexibility.

In order to improve their performances, these platforms should exploit latest development in terms of new design methods, including non-rigid structures and advanced materials (e.g. composite materials), both for the main body and for manipulators and end effectors, alongside innovative actuation and sensing approaches that go beyond traditional fixed rotational or linear links.

Proposals should target robotic systems addressing high impact needs in strategic industrial and service sectors. These systems should focus on enhanced mobility, autonomy, and simplified control architectures to support safe, efficient, and flexible operation. Integration of advanced sensors (e.g. touch, proximity, vision) is essential to enable reliable human-robot interaction, especially in rare or unpredictable safety-critical scenarios, addressing current limitations of AI in such contexts.

They should also include the design of secure and efficient communication protocols to ensure interoperability between robotic systems and digital frameworks or multi-agent environments.

Collaboration with end-users and industry partners is encouraged to validate the practical applicability and impact of the proposed robotic solutions.

To ensure practical uptake, projects are expected to demonstrate clear pathways to scalability and commercial deployment, engage with industry partners and end-users for validation, adopt a safety-product approach

Coordination with HORIZON-CL4-2025-04-DIGITAL-EMERGING-05, focused on soft robotics, is encouraged to maximise impact and ensure complementarity in advancing physical capabilities of next-generation robotic systems.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on AI, data, and robotics (ADRA), and all proposals are expected to allocate tasks for cohesion activities with ADRA.

Activities are expected to start at TRL 2 and achieve TRL 5 by the end of the project - see General Annex B.

[1] COM(2025) 723 Apply AI Strategy