The IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (RAM) is one of the most prestigious publications in our field. Known worldwide, it provides authoritative insights into the latest advances, applications, and challenges in robotics. For researchers, engineers, and industry stakeholders alike, being featured in RAM is not just visibility — it is recognition of scientific and technological relevance at the highest international level.

That is why we are thrilled that the September 2025 issue highlights euROBIN with the article:
“Door-to-Door Parcel Delivery From Supply Point to User’s Home With Heterogeneous Robot Team.”

What is it about?

The article presents the euROBIN hackathon scenario, where multiple robots — wheeled, legged, aerial, and manipulation platforms — collaborated to complete a complex real-world task: preparing, transporting, delivering, and unpacking a parcel. This challenge demonstrated how heterogeneous robotic systems can integrate their unique capabilities to achieve seamless cooperation in logistics.

Why is it important?

• It shows the potential of collaborative robotics to address complex real-world problems such as last-mile delivery.

• It demonstrates the value of benchmarking through hackathons, where diverse platforms are tested in shared scenarios, producing comparable results and lessons for the community.

• It embodies the spirit of euROBIN: connecting teams, domains, and technologies across Europe to expand what robots can achieve together.

This recognition in IEEE RAM is not just about one scenario — it highlights the importance of enabling knowledge and skill transfer across robots and researchers, and fostering innovation that benefits both science and society.

For the consortium, this is a collective success. It shows that our efforts are resonating globally, inspiring discussions, and setting benchmarks for the future of robotics research.

So, if you are interested in exploring more about the future of robotics and AI in Europe, take a look at the euROBIN Strategic Research Agenda (SRA), which outlines our roadmap for the years ahead.

- Read the September 2025 issue of IEEE RAM: https://magazines.ieee.org/ra/library/page/september_2025/8/
- Explore the euROBIN SRA: https://www.eurobin-project.eu/index.php/showroom/news/159-europe-robotics-strategic-agenda-sra-2025

We are proud to share the invited article “Robot Contests as a Catalyst for Robotics Science”, published in the Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems (2025). Authored by Pedro U. Lima, Carlos Azevedo, and Rodrigo Serra, this work reflects on the crucial role of robot contests in driving scientific progress and innovation in the field.

While traditional robotics research often emphasizes subsystem optimization or theoretical design, robot contests provide a unique platform for benchmarking complete robot systems. By encouraging integrated system development and tackling realistic challenges, competitions push the boundaries of what robots can achieve. The article discusses how these contests, when designed following best practices, stimulate progress across domains, strengthen education by promoting teamwork and problem-solving, and support technology transfer — with several notable spin-off companies originating from competition environments.

The paper surveys well-established robotics contests as sources of diverse approaches to performance assessment and best practices, while also introducing alternative formats such as cooperative competitions. In particular, it highlights the potential of these approaches to foster transferability across robotic platforms and tasks, supported by benchmarking metrics. A dedicated section also reflects on the role of the euROBIN Coopetitions as an innovative contribution to this evolving landscape.

Learn more about the scientific paper here: https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-control-022624-012944

Congratulations to the authors Pedro U. Lima, Carlos Azevedo, and Rodrigo Serra for this insightful contribution that underscores the importance of contests as catalysts for robotics research and innovation.

We are pleased to announce that the article “Perspective-Shifted Neuro-Symbolic World Models: A Framework for Socially-Aware Robot Navigation” has been accepted at the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN). This work was carried out under euROBIN’s WP7, led by PhD student Kevin Alcedo and co-supervised by Pedro U. Lima and Rachid Alami.

Robots navigating alongside humans must not only reason under uncertainty but also account for the beliefs, intentions, and perspectives of those around them. Traditional egocentric navigation can be formulated as a Markov Decision Process (MDP), yet social navigation requires extending this to a Partially Observable MDP (POMDP), where agents lack direct access to others' mental states. To address this challenge, the paper proposes a neuro-symbolic, model-based reinforcement learning architecture that enables effective belief tracking in partially observable environments. It further introduces a perspective-shift operator for belief estimation, while also leveraging recent advances in Influence-based Abstractions (IBA) to improve reasoning in structured multi-agent settings.

This contribution opens new directions for socially-aware navigation, bridging symbolic reasoning and neural learning methods in robotics.

More information about the article: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20425

Congratulations to the authors Kevin Alcedo, Pedro U. Lima, and Rachid Alami for their innovative work!