CIOP-PIB participates in an international project  Advancing the physical intelligence and performance of roBOTs towards human-like bi-manual objects MANipulation (MANiBOT).The project is funded under HORIZON EUROPE.

General information

The MANiBOT project aims at bi-manual mobile robots, able to perform a wide variety of manipulation tasks with highly diverse objects, possibly partly or fully unknown beforehand, in a human-like manner and performance. To achieve this, MANiBOT advance and fuse all necessary technologies, from multimodal perception, cognition and control, to novel cognitive mechatronics. MANiBOT develop new environment understanding and object/pose recognition methods, empowered through adaptive, context-aware fusion of vision, proximity and tactile sensing and emphasizing on adequate efficiency for fast and effective manipulation, even of objects without precise model, including deformable ones, and in diverse, challenging environments with human presence. MANiBOT also develop a novel suite of manipulation primitives including non-prehensile manipulations, which along with bi-manual manipulation will allow the transfer of diverse objects with various sizes, weights, shapes, materials and rigidities from a mobile robot, with performance close to that of humans, even upon significant spatial constraints. The above are fused through a novel approach for robot cognitive functions based on multilevel robot cycles that allow learning, composing and swiftly adapting robot behaviors for complex manipulations, covering key topics of sequential manipulation of multiple objects to achieve complex goals. MANiBOT push the limits of physical intelligence of bimanual mobile robots by coupling our methods with novel cognitive mechatronics, fusing advanced tactile and proximity sensors with a bi-manual mobile manipulator, optimized for energy efficiency and increased autonomy, including HRI capabilities for trustworthy and efficient operation. The project outcomes will be evaluated in four use cases, in three pilot sites (TRL5), in challenging environments where the handling of abundance of different objects is needed; in retail/supermarkets and transport/airports, for shelves restocking and baggage handling operations.

The project has received funding for three and a half years, from 2023 to 2027. 

CIOP-PIB’s contribution

CIOP-PIB is involved in several project tasks. Researchers form the Institute are responsible for the development and implementation of a safety, trustworthiness and dependability factors analysis for the MANiBOT robots.

Project consortium

The project consortium consists of 13 partners from 7 different countries. The project is coordinated by CERTH/ITI - Centre for Research and Technologies Hellas in Thessaloniki, Information Technologies Institute, Greece.

More information about the project:    

https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101120823

Contact information

Magdalena Kacperska-Vukić

International Cooperation Division

Central Institute for Labour Protection - National Research Institute

e-mail: makac@ciop.pl