ECOBOTICS is a Research and Innovation Action that aims at environmental monitoring and control as the main application
area. The vision of the ECOBOTICS project is to research completely novel approaches in Robotics, with special emphasis
on its use for the monitoring, protection and preservation of a variety of ecosystems and animal and plant species, which
occur in remote, unstructured domains with interface media. The project focus on the research, design and development of
robotic systems whose versatility is substantially increased by the incorporation of metamorphic design concepts that make
the robots reconfigurable. This enhanced versatility is required for the project’s main application environments including
“transition media” such as mixtures of solids and fluids, gaseous and liquid, etc. Another aspect to be addressed thoroughly
by the project is the research on, and the conception of, advanced sensing systems for robots which enable are required for
operating in such extreme environments. Two types of robots will be researched and developed: one type for underwater
operations and another type for aerial operations. Six specific use cases will be targeted and a specific methodology will be
developed to serve the design and manufacturing the “ECOBOTICS Systems”. The methodology will establish a common
framework for design robots for persistent monitoring of environment. From there, 3 Common Prototypes will be developed,
and each one will be configured to respond to 2 use cases and demonstrated in realistic environments and operational
conditions. The consortium is composed by 6 European research institutes specialized in robotics, specialist in metamorphic
design, probabilistic computing and AI. Two large companies specialized in environmental assessment and 2 SMEs. The
partners distribution includes members from Germany, Austria, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Estonia.
ECOBOTICS is also closely affiliated with the European RISE project ECOBOTICS.SEA.
