Category: Uncategorized

A workshop on the topic of the organization an help of project offices in order to support researchers was held in Portorož, Slovenia, between September 28th and 30th 2026, preceded by a project meeting. In two days of discussions and presentations partners from JSI, CSIC and KIT presented their project offices. We were joined by members of project HERON, which aims to create the first Robotics Center of Excellence (CoE) in Greece for advancing the science and technology of robotics in the AI era, coupled with industrial innovation. Members of their administration joined in our workshop to share experience, but also to gain experience from ROMANDIC institutions.

The participation of people from the project offices is what made this event special, as hands-on experience and organizational structures, ideas, gender aspect and outlooks were shared by the people really working in these fields. The advancement of AI also has an effect on project offices, that is why KIT kindly presented their developments in this field.

All the participants left the event with new, exciting ideas and with memorable impressions.

A detailed description, presentations and videos from the event are available here.

The event “Closing the Automation Gap: Robotics for Textile Handling in Europe contributing to competitiveness” brought together European Commission representatives, textile-sector stakeholders, industry actors, robotics researchers, and European project coordinators to discuss how robotic manipulation of textiles and other deformable objects can move from research promise to industrial impact and what conditions/support is and can be set by the policy and decision makers. Across the presentations, the core message was consistent: Europe has strong scientific capacity and relevant policy momentum, but the field remains fragmented, under-deployed, and not yet sufficiently connected to the realities of textile production, recycling, logistics, and healthcare.

The event summary is available here.

The event agenda is available here.

Conclusions:

• The automation gap is not only technical; it is also a deployment gap. Europe has strong research, but needs better mechanisms to move from prototypes to robust, high-volume, economically viable systems.
• Textile automation is strategically important for competitiveness and circularity. Robotics can support productivity, quality, labour resilience, traceability, Digital Product Passports, sorting, disassembly, fibre recovery, and circular textile value chains.
• Deformable-object manipulation remains difficult because “fabric is not metal.” Textiles and soft materials deform, fold, tangle, degrade, hide their geometry, and vary from item to item, requiring adaptive perception, planning, control, grippers, and learning.
• Europe needs shared testbeds, benchmarks, demonstrators, and pilot lines. Common evaluation environments would help compare approaches, reduce duplication, validate performance, and accelerate industrial uptake.
• SMEs and industrial users need de-risked adoption models. Funding support, outcome-based procurement, Robotics-as-a-Service, experimentation facilities, and integration support are essential for textile companies with limited investment capacity.
• The Network of Excellence should build alliances, not silos. DOM-net and related efforts should connect robotics researchers with textile networks, industry associations, recyclers, policymakers, and automation providers around focused, deployable challenges.

On April 10th we held an online review meeting with an external reviewer and the project officer.

All project partners presented our work on the project from the past 17 months.

Our euRobotics! ERF workshop WS#53 Advanced Robot Manipulation of Deformable and Fragile Objects took place today at the very start of the ERF. It was a great event with interesting presentations, but most importantly, excellent attendance! Hopefully, we continue collaboration with the attendees, maybe through the Network of Excellence on Deformable Object Manipulation by Robots (https://dom-net.eu/).

The ws was organized between EU projects SoftEnable, Project ROMANDIC, Flexcycle_project and MTC – Manufacturing Technology Centre; by Florian T. Pokorny, Andrej Gams and MAHESH DISSANAYAKE.

The Project ROMANDIC winter school on deformable object manipulation (DOM) by robots, extensively presented on our webpage, was organized to:
* address the underlying topics of robot handling of deformables;
*get hands-on experience in the specifics of perception, simulation, use of robots, and applications in the field; and
* meet and discuss with people working on the topic.

In short, to learn new things and have a good time at it.

The winter school was a great success! Check the winter school webpage!

This autumn in Project ROMANDIC we had three secondments between Jozef Stefan Institute’s Humanoid and Cognitive Robotics Lab and IRI – Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial, CSIC-UPC. We started with Mahed Dadgostar and Franco Coltraro’s visit in Ljubljana and ended with Andrej Gams’s visit in Barcelona, hosted by Júlia Borràs Sol and Guillem Alenya. Great things are ahead!

One of the key events of Project ROMANDIC, the Senior Researcher Seminar, took place at the High Performance Humanoid Technologies (H2T), Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics (IAR) Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

In three days of lively discussions and interesting presentations of leading researchers in the field, we learned a lot about deformable object manipulation by robots.

We also initialized the Network of Excellence on Deformable Object Manipulation by Robots DOM-net.eu

The workshop, organized in the scope of IROS 2025 in Hagzhou, China, on October 20th, 2025, focused on the dynamic relationship between perception, decision-making, and execution in the robotic manipulation of deformable objects.

Project ROMANDIC was one of co-organisers of the WS.

In the photo there are some of the present organizers and presenters.

On October 15th we held the strategic foresight workshop titled “Izzivi slovenske robotike – Robotike in umetna inteligenca za napredno manipulacijo”.

The event was well attended with over 85 atendees. Topics such as robotics, AI and manipulation with a special focus and invited lectures on handling of deformable objects.

More about the event here and here.

Together with JSI’s U7 – Office for Substantive Project Support, Technology Transfer and Innovation we are organizing an entrepreneurship workshop for early-career researchers.

The event, meant for PhD students and early career researchers, will take place on September 18th, at the Electronics lecture room, Teslova 30, Ljubljana (1st floor).

The event is titled How do I prepare a good business model and present (pitch) my invention?

More about the event here.