KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm has grown to become one of Europe’s leading technical and engineering universities, as well as a key centre of intellectual talent and innovation. KTH is Sweden’s largest technical research and learning institution. KTH's research and education covers a wide area including natural sciences and all branches of engineering, as well as architecture, industrial management, urban planning, history and philosophy. KTH is coordinating of the SoftEnable project.

Expertise related to the project: The Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning (RPL) at KTH Royal Institute performs research in robotics, computer vision and machine learning. The research group of Florian Pokorny, who is acting as Coordinator for the SoftEnable project in particular has a strong expertise at the intersection of geometric and machine learning based methods for robotic manipulation. Besides being responsible for coordination activities, the team at KTH will focus in particular on data-driven techniques for reasoning about configuration spaces that arise in soft fixture-based manipulation actions.

Team involved in SoftEnable: Florian Pokorny (Coordinator), Yifei Dong, Georgios Papathansiou

Website: https://www.kth.se/is/rpl

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is the national aeronautics and space research Centre of Germany, as well as its space agency. DLR conduct research and development activities in the fields of aeronautics, space, energy, transport, security, and digitalization. The Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics (RM) is the central part of the Robotics and Mechatronics Center (RMC), a cluster and competence center for research and development in the areas of robotics, mechatronics, control and optical systems. The core competence of RMC is the design and realization of complex intelligent mechatronic concepts and systems, human-machine interfaces, as well as interdisciplinary virtual design, and computer-aided optimization and simulation. In the robotics community, the center is one of the biggest and most acknowledged institutes worldwide. Examples of the pioneering work are multiple lightweight arms, multi-fingered hands, and high performance control algorithms. These technologies have been successfully transferred to industrial partners such as KUKA, Brainlab, Schunk, and Medtronic, and have also been used as seed for multiple start-ups, including Robodrive, Sensodrive, Roboception, and Kinetik Space. For these activities, the RMC has received the EURON/ERF (European Robotics Forum) Technology Transfer Award in multiple occasions. The institute coordinates and contributes to several international projects funded by the European Comission, as well as collaboration projects and missions with other space actors such as ESA, JPL, and JAXA.

Expertise related to the project: DLR-RM has a long tradition in the development of hardware and software for robotic manipulation. The most famous example is the lightweight robot arm, developed at the institute and licensed to KUKA for commercialization. Other examples include the surgical system MIRO, licensed to Medtronic, and technology licensed to the spin-offs Agile Robots and Kastanienbaum/Franka Emika. End effectors have as well being a strong development point at RM, with robotic hands licensed to Schunk and to the spin-off Wessling Robotics. In terms of software, RM is famous for the development of compliant control for torque-controlled robots, which has enabled the development of the booming market of cobots. In the last decade, RM has taken part of several projects related to robotic manipulation, including DEXMART, THE, GERT, SMErobotics, and SOMA. In the SOMA project, RM developed the CLASH hand, together with planning strategies to exploit environmental constraints while performing manipulation actions. In SOFTENABLE, RM will focus on the mechatronic development of a gripper for manipulating deformable objects in logistic scenarios, together with the required planning and control layers for implementation of the required manipulation skills in a relevant scenario.

Team involved in SoftEnable: Dr. Maximo A. Roa, Ashok M. Sundaram, Werner Friedl, Ana E. Huezo, Dr. Joao Silverio

Website: https://www.dlr.de/rm/en

Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) is the largest research organization in Spain and the third in Europe, with 125 institutes and 4.345 permanent researchers covering all areas of science and technology and generating 20% of Spain’s scientific production. The project is being carried out at the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRI) in Barcelona, which is a joint research centre of CSIC and the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) founded in 1995. The team in the project belongs to the Robot Perception and Manipulation group, which currently has 9 permanent researchers, 6 postdocs, 25 PhD students, plus technical personnel and master students, totalling around 60 members. The group has a large lab with ten robots (4 mobile platforms and 6 robot arms) and a shared mechanical workshop. The team brings to the project their pioneering expertise on cloth manipulation, including gripper design, grasping primitives, cloth state representation, manipulation planning, and learning algorithms.

Team involved in SoftEnable: Carme Torras, Júlia Borràs, Guillem Alenyà, Sergi Foix

Website: https://www.iri.upc.edu

For more than a century, the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology has been Israel's primary technological university and the largest center of applied research in Israel. The Technion is currently the 2nd ranked university in Israel according to The Shanghai Ranking for 2022 placed Technion at 83rd out of universities around the world. Technion one of a handful of universities world-wide housing multiple Nobel-laureates simultaneously. Technion is Israel's biggest scientific-technologically university and one of the largest centers of applied research in the world. The future is being shaped at the Technion - with 12,500 Israel's most dynamic students active in 18 departments. From Excellence in teaching to cutting-edge research, Technion offers more than 50 undergraduate programs and more than 60 graduate programs in engineering, science, medicine, architecture, education and management. Technion is Israel's flagship of world-class education - bringing the small country of Israel its first Nobel prizes in science. It is also a vital center of national and international outreach - with a superb range of programs promoting science, technology and entrepreneurship for young people across the world. The Technion encourages scientific participation at a national and international level. The Technion invest considerable resources to promoting women in science as well as the integration of minorities through equal opportunity programs. Technion footsteps are imprinted in collaborative scientific research and outreach projects worldwide, making it a powerhouse of collaborative thought, blending inspiration and expertise from across the disciplines, with numerous international conferences and symposia each year. Bridging the gap between science and society, the Technion run numerous courses in entrepreneurship, innovation and scientific communication. The Entrepreneurship Center at Technion sponsors many and varied activities designed to take advantage of Technion's outstanding capabilities in innovative technologies and applications.

Team involved in SoftEnable: Prof. Elon Rimon, Itay Grinberg (Master's student), Roni Levin (doctorate student)

Website: https://www.technion.ac.il

Fundació Clínic per a la Recerca Biomèdica (FCRB) and its affiliated entity Hospital Clínic de Barcelona. The FCRB is a non-profit foundation set up in 1989 by the Hospital Clínic Barcelona and the University of Barcelona. Its main mission is to provide administrative support to researchers at Hospital Clínic Barcelona in the management, development and justification of their scientific activity. It also works to attract resources for research and, through the Aula Clínic and Eixample Clínic platforms, to promote and disseminate continuous training in the health sciences. Fundació Clínic per a la Recerca Biomèdica is member of the Red de Entidades Gestoras de Investigación Clínica Hospitalaria y Biosanitaria (REGIC).

Team involved in SoftEnable: Joaquim Fores, Pere Torner, Ana Maria Carreño, Ana Perez, Pau Acubilla, Montsant Jornet, Camille Frey

Website: https://www.clinic.cat

Ocado Group is a UK-based technology company providing end-to-end online grocery ecommerce, fulfilment and logistics solutions to some of the world’s largest grocery retailers. For over 20 years Ocado has been transforming online grocery through cutting-edge tech innovation. Today, a 2,500 strong team of technologists in 12 development centres across 8 countries are developing industry-leading capabilities across both software and hardware engineering - in automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and more.

Expertise related to the project: Ocado Group and its consortium partners within the Horizon 2020 SoMa (SOft MAnipulation) project achieved significant breakthroughs in developing state-of-the-art robotic manipulation capabilities for industry. The SoMa consortium achieved a paradigm shift in soft manipulation approach by using soft hands that can easily adapt to the shape of the object, and leverage the physical constraints of the environment as opportunities to guide manipulation. We will leverage our expertise into SOFTENABLE and continue to advance the related research in collaboration with the consortium partners.

Team involved in SoftEnable: Liza Konstantinova, Radhika Gudipati, Duncan Russel, Graham Deacon

Website: https://www.ocadogroup.com/technology/technology-pioneers