[I-RIM ML] ICT40 Network of Centers of Excellence in AI - CENTRIS Proposal

[Antonio Bicchi]

Cari amici robotici,

questo messaggio alla nuova mailing list aperta di I-RIM ha avuto 
difficoltà di invio. Lo rimando adesso *con un importante aggiornamento* 
rispetto al messaggio che potete aver ricevuto attraverso la vecchia 
lista di googlegroups (irim_ml at googlegroups.com).

Per favore, seguite le istruzioni aggiornate e registratevi (se non lo 
avete già fatto) nel portale della proposta 
https://www.centris-ai.eu/join-our-community/ oltre che nel foglio 
elettronico 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S5xHbaZjToAdwJ1HN0r6RAqdKEtyVMlhEfKxfsC9BQc/edit?usp=sharing

Grazie

Antonio

--------------------------

Cari amici,

as you might already know, a proposal is being prepared for the ICT-48 
call to form a European-wide network of centers of excellence in AI 
focusing on the second of four pillars called “Intelligent Robots”.The 
coordinator of the CENTRIS proposal is Prof. Sami Haddadin, of TUM. A 
message from Sami is appended below.

The proposal philosophy is inclusive, in the sense that all significant 
groups should be and feel involved, in one way or another. The main 
management scheme will be cascade funding for a number of agile seed 
projects, mainly oriented to young PIs from research, startups and SMEs.

There will be an important involvement of successful researchers and 
established companies in drafting the strategies of the network, which 
has the ambition to lay the fundaments of research and Innovation in 
robotics and intelligent machines for the next decades. There will not 
be very significant funding for any single partner.

The rough idea is that groups with large dimensions (of the order of 5 
independent PIs) should be members of the (large) consortium. They will 
not have direct funding, but will be able to participate in calls for 
projects within the consortium. The internal projects will be roughly 
2-300K € in size. We estimate that 60% of the total funding will go 
towards these cascaded funds.

Smaller groups will not be signatories of the grant contract from the 
start, but will be able to participate in external calls for projects, 
of similar size as internal.

We estimate that 20% of the total funding will be dedicated to external 
calls. The rest of the resources will be invested in the management of 
the network, staff, travel and overhead of the beneficiaries that will 
make the network management.

Researchers involved in the strategy and management will not be eligible 
for participation to the cascade funding schemes. The principle behind 
all that is that the marginal utility of participation in any of the 
roles (management partners, research partners, and external) is the 
same. That is, everyone should be equally happy (and unhappy).

Further information can be found on our homepage:

https://www.centris-ai.eu/

*You are welcome to express your interest in participation by putting 
your inputs in the form
https://www.centris-ai.eu/join-our-community/ 
<https://www.centris-ai.eu/join-our-community/>*

*It will be also very useful to us if you complete the information 
provided with entries in this spreadsheet 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S5xHbaZjToAdwJ1HN0r6RAqdKEtyVMlhEfKxfsC9BQc/edit?usp=sharing 
(the spreadsheet includes already few examples, please edit and complete 
directly your rows).*

The coordinator, Sami Haddadin, and his aides Tanja Robnik 
<tanja.robnik at tum.de <mailto:tanja.robnik at tum.de>> and Jan Harder 
<j.harder at tum.de> at TUM/MSRM, are in CC, and will follow up directly.

All the best,

Antonio

___________

Message from Sami Haddadin, Coordinator of the CENTRIS proposal


Dear friends and colleagues from the European robotics community,

As many of you know and are already involved, we currently coordinate a 
joint research proposal for the ICT-48 call to form a European-wide 
network of centers of excellence in AI focusing on the second of four 
pillars called “Intelligent Robots”. This is the first call in the 
strategic agenda of Europe’s AI research. It aims for setting up a 
network and support the community, so subsequent lines of action may 
follow. It is sought to be inclusive and involve our entire community.

With rather short time for writing such an important proposal, we are in 
the process of gathering a strong alliance of as many European robotics 
researches as possible. From this broad community that has already met 
in parts at ICRA and recently in Paris, a task force including

Rachid Alami, Alin Albu-Schäffer, Tamim Asfour, Michael Beetz, Antonio 
Bicchi, Aude Billard, Etienne Burdet, Wolfram Burgard, Raja Chatila, 
Francois Chaumette, Daniel Cremers, Paolo Dario, Alessandro De Luca, 
Paolo Fiorini, Sami Haddadin, Marco Hutter, Alois Knoll, Sabine Köszegi, 
Danica Kragic, Maarja Kruusmaa, Cecilia Laschi, Andreas Liebl, Achim 
Lilienthal, Giorgio Metta, Anibal Ollero, Angelika Peer, Jan Peters, 
Alessandro Saffiotti, Giulio Sandini, Jose Santos-Victor, Bruno 
Siciliano, Roland Siegwart, Thierry Simeon, Stefano Stramigioli, Carme 
Torras, Ales Ude, Bram Vanderborght, Luigi Villani, Markus Vincze

has recently been put together that started its work for consolidating 
the discussed ideas into a convincing concept for our Robotics 
Community. Now, we would like to ask you as members of our community to 
actively get involved and become part of this joint effort, support and 
help if you feel this is important and deserves your support!

You are very welcome to express your interest in participation on our 
homepage:

https://www.centris-ai.eu/join-our-community/

Soon, we will approach the entire community with subsequent steps and 
hope you all support this wonderful and truly inclusive effort of our 
European robotics community.

At this point I also would like to introduce Tanja Robnik and Jan Harder 
(tanja.robnik at tum.de <mailto:tanja.robnik at tum.de>; j.harder at tum.de) at 
TUM / MSRM, they will serve as key point of contacts so that 
communications run smoothly.

All the very best,

Sami & Rachid


Coordinator / Co-Coordinator

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