European Robotics Research Network

The European Robotics Research Network (EURON) was founded in 2000, with funds from the Fifth Framework Programme of the European Commission. The official, contractual starting date was December 1, 2000, but the network's kickoff meeting took place in Las Palmas, Spain on 18 and 19 January, 2001. EURON currently has more than 225 member institutes all over Europe (including associated countries such as Turkey, Israel or Russia). These members are all basic and applied research centres in robotics, from universities, from technology transfer institutes (such as the German Fraunhofer Gesellschaft), from national research networks (such as the French National Centre for Scientific Research), or from companies (such as ABB or KUKA). The goal of the network is to stimulate and promote research, education and technology transfer around robotics in Europe. It also serves as a central contact point to the European Commission, mainly to prepare roadmaps and facilitate the access of members to funding proposals in the area of robotics research, mainly in the current Seventh Framework Programme of the European Union.
EURON has two yearly awards, one for the best PhD thesis of the previous year (the so-called Georges Giralt PhD Award, in honour of the French professor Georges Giralt, one of the major founding fathers of European robotics), and the euRobotics Technology Transfer Award (previously called the EUROP/EURON Technology Transfer Award), that honours examples of effective transfer of technology from universities or research centres to companies. The Technology Transfer Award is a co-organization with the robotics industry in Europe.
Henrik I. Christensen from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, was the network's founding president, and was instrumental in giving EURON an internationally recognized face. When Christensen moved to Georgia Tech in the United States of America in 2007, the network chose Herman Bruyninckx from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, as his successor. He was re-elected in 2010 for a new term of two years.
The funding by the European Commission was extended once in 2004, for another period of four years, and ended in April 2008. Since then, the network continues as a community-driven organisation. Its major goals are to bridge the gaps with, on the one hand, the industrial robotics actors in Europe, and on the other hand the general public and the mainstream industries that do not yet exploit robotics technology. In addition, EURON wants to improve the education and training of PhD students and of industrial robotics engineers all over Europe. Both EURON and EUROP are partners in the Coordination Action euRobotics, that is funded by the European Commission to help achieve those goals. A first outcome of this closer cooperation is that EURON and EUROP organised, for the first time, their Annual Meetings together in 2010, in a three-day event in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.

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