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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 non 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.

We are co-organizing the “5th workshop on RObotic MAnipulation of Deformable Objects: holistic approaches and challenges forward” in the scope of IROS 2025.

The workshop will be held on Monday morning, October 20, 2025 in Hangzhou, China, in the scope of IROS 2025!

We welcome submission of extended abstracts by September 20, 2025! See Call For Abstracts for details.

Colleagues from CSIC, specifically Franco Coltaro, presented their cloth simulator, developed within the Clothilde project, called the Clothilde simulator, see here and here.

In this online tutorial the simulator itself, its properties, and the usage were presented, followed by an extensive debate.

Thanks Franco!