EU Transport Vision 2050 might boost Personal Rapid Transit (PRT)

Image: ULTra Ltd.

The European Union announced plans to ban all petrol and diesel powered cars from cities by 2050 in a draconian plan designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent.
European Commission, the executive body of the EU, wants 50 percent of Europe’s vehicles to be zero emission by 2030 and conventionally fuelled vehicles to be banned from cities altogether by 2050. The Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and into "alternative" means of transportation, says EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas.
"That means no more conventionally fuelled cars in our city centers," he said. "Action will follow legislation – real action to change behaviour."
The measures could "dramatically reduce Europe's dependence on imported oil and cut carbon emissions in transport by 60% by 2050", says the Commission.
Key goals of the 'Single European Transport Area' (PDF) by 2050 are: no more conventionally fuelled cars in cities; 40% use of low-carbon fuels in aviation; at least a 40% cut in shipping emissions; and a 50% shift of medium distance inter-city passenger and freight journeys from road to rail and water-borne transport.
The plan also says that by 2050 the majority of medium-distance passenger journeys - those above about 300 km (186 miles) - should be by rail.
All core network airports should be connected to the rail network by 2050, with all core seaports "sufficiently connected to the rail freight and, where possible, inland waterway system".
For longer-distance travel, and intercontinental freight, air and sea travel will benefit.

Personal rapid transit (PRT)
Personal rapid transit (PRT), also called personal automated transport (PAT) or podcar, is a public transportation mode featuring small automated vehicles operating on a network of specially-built guide ways. PRT is a type of automated guideway transit (AGT), a class of system which also includes larger vehicles all the way to small subway systems. PRT offers personal, on-demand non-stop transportation between any two points on a network of specially built guide-ways’. A PRT system consists of a number of small automated vehicles (seating 2 to 6 passengers) combining the desirable aspects of the private car (private travel at any desired time) with the social advantages of public transport (no congestion and parking issues).

First Public PRT at London Heathrow Airport

In summer 2011 the first public and commercial PRT system anywhere in the world will open at London’s Heathrow Airport. Commissioned by BAA (formerly the British Airport Authority) the ULTra PRT system comprises some 4 kilometers of guideway and will link one station in Terminal 5 to two remote stations in the Business car park.
ULTra PRT (originally Advanced Transport Systems Ltd) began developing the system in 1995, in association with the University of Bristol. The ULTra system emerged from systematic engineering analysis as the optimum solution to urban transport problems. By 2001, the company had established a 1km test track in Cardiff, where it has conducted trial runs of several generations of PRT vehicles. In 2005, ULTra PRT was chosen to build the system at London's Heathrow Airport.

PRT for the world’s first carbon neutral City

In the heart of Abu Dhabi work has started on the most ambitious sustainable development in the world today. Masdar City will be the world’s first carbon neutral, zero-waste to landfill, car-free city powered entirely by alternative energy sources. Masdar City will be built on six and a half square kilometres and will grow eventually to house 1,500 businesses, 40,000 residents and 50,000 commuters.

There will be no fossil fuel cars within Masdar City. The city will be a pedestrian-friendly environment, with a Personal Rapid Transit system (PRT) available for longer journeys.  The PRT vehicles will travel at speeds up to 40km/h, with the longest routes in the city taking around 10 minutes. Ultimately there will be 3,000 PRT vehicles serving 130,000 trips/day over the 85 stations.




APM-ATS 2011

The 13th International Conference on Automated People Movers and Transit Systems will be held in Paris, Palais des Congrès, from May 22 to 26, 2011.

European Robot Companions for Citizens accepted to negotiation

The CA-RoboCom pilot, aimed at the design of the FET Flagship Initiative on "Robot Companions for Citizens", was evaluated positively and invited to negotiation. The selection process of the CAs that will be funded was very severe: 23 CA proposals were submitted and 6 were selected and invited to negotiation. The negotiation with the invited CA proposals will take place in Brussels on February 28.
If the negotiation will be successful the CA-RoboCom will be funded, and will start  officially on May 1, 2011 (duration 1 year).


Currently, the initiative is supported by a very large and growing  community, involving more than 90 experts  across academy and industry of 15 different European countries, and 10 interdisciplinary organizations, involving networks, clusters of excellence and technological platforms.

Ambient Assisted Robotics in Europe

By 2050 37% of the EU population will be over 60 years of age and it is expected that there will be fewer than two persons of working age per older person of 65 or older. This will lead to both an increasing demand for care and a shortage of care givers. Older persons need support due to their declining capabilities but also to age related illnesses. 

Several studies and roadmaps predict that robotics will play an important role as assisting and rehabilitation technology, supporting professional and home care. Robotics can add value to health care and care of elderly i.e. by reduction in labour costs, increasing independence and social participation, increasing the quality of care and performing activities that can not be performed by humans. 

Some ongoing projects related to Ambient Assisted Living and Assistive Robotics are listed below. If you are missing any project, please contact Robotland. 

KSERA - Knowledgeable SErvice Robots for Aging

The KSERA project is aimed to develop a socially assistive robot that helps elderly people, especially those with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), with their daily activities, care needs and self-management of their disease. KSERA is cooperating with two other projects: eHome and RoboEarth. 

AAL - eHome
The Austrian project AAL- eHOME focus on the development of an assistive home environment for elderly persons, covering fall recognition and prevention, activity monitoring and social integration of elderly persons and their carers. The KSERA intelligent home environment will include expertise from the eHOME project such as wearable and distributed approaches for fall prevention and recognition.

ROBOEARTH -  Robots sharing a knowledge base for world modelling and learning actions

The EU funded FP7 project RoboEarth will develop a World Wide Web for robots including nurse-bots and socially assistive robots (SAR). The robots use the World Wide Web to store and retrieve learned tasks and actions. This enables robots to learn form each other and apply it in their own setting. KSERA and RoboEarth partners share their knowledge and investigate how the KSERA project can contribute to the World Wide Web for robot assistants for the aging population.

FLORENCE -  Multi Purpose Mobile Robot for Ambient Assisted Living

Florence is a sister project in the EU's FP7 objective ICT-2009.7.1. ICT & Aging: service robotics for aging well. The project is based on a multipupurpose mobile robot platform and will pioneer the use of robots in delivering new kinds of AAL services to elderly persons and their caretakers. The main objective of Florence is to make this concept acceptable for the users and cost effective for the society and care givers.

ROBO M.D. - Home care robot for monitoring and detection of critical situations

In the INTERREG-IVC project ROBO M.D. develop a home care robot which monitors and detects critical situations which need prompt medical attention for older persons or people with cardiovascular diseases.

ALIAS - Adaptable Ambient LIving ASsistant

The objective of the ALIAS project is development of a mobile robot system that interacts with elderly users, monitors and provides cognitive assistance in daily life, and promotes social inclusion by creating connections to people and events in the wider world. The system is designed for people living alone at home or in care facilities such as nursing or elderly care homes.

ALIZ-E - Adaptive Strategies for Sustainable Long-Term Social Interaction

The goal of ALIZ-E is to develop methods for developing and testing interactive, mobile robots which will be able to interact with human users over extended periods of time, i.e. a possibly non-continuous succession of interactions which can refer back to, and build forth on, previous experiences.To achieve this aim, ALIZ-E will address three related issues in developing interactive robots capable of self-sustaining medium- to long-term autonomous operation in real-world indoor environments. 

COMPANIONABLE - Integrated Cognitive Assistive & Domotic Companion Robotic Systems for Ability & Security

CompanionAble will provide the synergy of Robotics and Ambient Intelligence technologies and their semantic integration to provide for a care-giver's assistive environment. This will support the cognitive stimulation and therapy management of the care-recipient. This is mediated by a robotic companion (mobile facilitation) working collaboratively with a smart home environment (stationary facilitation). 

EXCITE - Enabling SoCial Interaction Through Embodiment

The primary objective of the ExCITE project is to evaluate user requirements for social interaction via robotic telepresence, and develop insight around the usability and acceptance of this technology. The project is focused on user experience in native settings that accurately represent relevant factors, including user profile, user attitude, home environment, network and the robotic technology itself. A prototype system called the Giraff is used. The Giraff is a remotely controlled mobile, human-height physical avatar integrated with a videoconferencing system. 

1,2 Billion Euro to Top 10 European Research Institutions

The Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7) is the biggest ever investment made by the EU in assuring its future as a knowledge-based society. It builds on the successes and experience of previous FPs that have grown in ambition over the years. FP7 has a budget of some €50 billion over the seven years from 2007-2013, constituting an annual average investment that is substantially higher than in previous Framework Programmes and that will, by the end of the period rise, to around 10% of the public spending on research by Member States.
A recent FP7 Evaluation Report claims that the principle of excellence in project selection is largely achieved. In much of the  Cooperation  Programme to which nearly two-thirds of FP7 funding is allocated, leading researchers are being funded.
The Top 10 research organizations account so far for 1,2 billion Euro and the Top 50 for 3,1 billion Euro of EU contributions.
The 10 Top organisations are:

	Organization	Country	Participations	EU Contribution €M
1	CNRS	FR	501	231
2	Fraunhofer Ges.	DE	331	153,1
3	CEA	FR	234	118,7
4	Max Planck Ges.	DE	238	115,4
5	Univ. of Cambridge	UK	215	97,8
6	EPFL	CH	165	97,4
7	Univ. of Oxford	UK	176	96,7
8	ESF	EU	9	93,5
9	ETHZ	CH	170	91,7
10	Imperial College	UK	175	86,9

Source: FP7 interim evaluation report Nov 2010

10 Million Euro for Harvesting Robots

Artist impression of the concept

Clever Robots for Crops CROPS is a large-scale integrating FP7 EU project in the theme Nanotechnologies, Materials and new Production Technologies within the call: Automation and robotics for sustainable crop and forestry management. 
CROPS is coordinated by Wageningen University & Research Centre (WUR) and will develop scientific know-how for a highly configurable, modular and clever carrier platform that includes modular parallel manipulators and intelligent tools (sensors, algorithms, sprayers, grippers) that can be easily installed onto the carrier and are capable of adapting to new tasks and conditions. Several technological demonstrators will be developed for high value crops like greenhouse vegetables, fruits in orchards, and grapes for premium wines. The CROPS robotic platform will be capable of site-specific spraying (targets spray only towards foliage and selective targets) and selective harvesting of fruit (detects the fruit, determines its ripeness, moves towards the fruit, grasps it and softly detaches it). Another objective of CROPS is to develop techniques for reliable detection and classification of obstacles and other objects to enable successful autonomous navigation and operation in plantations and forests. The agricultural and forestry applications share many research areas, primarily regarding sensing and learning capabilities.
See also Robotics in Agriculture Research Program

€155 million for European Robotics Research

The European Commission's Directorate-General for Research has launched a new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Call: FP7-ICT-2011-7 including Challenge 2: Cognitive Systems and Robotics


Challenge 2 aims to enhance the performance and manageability of artificial cognitive systems and to expand and improve the functionalities of robotic systems operating under circumstances that were not fully planned for explicitly at design time. It supports both research on endowing artificial systems with cognitive capabilities as well as research more specifically related to the design and engineering of robotic systems. The call lists folowing Target Outcomes:

a) Robotic systems operating in real-world environments
b) Cognition and control in complex systems
c) Gearing up and accelerating cross-fertilisation between academic and industrial robotics research
d) Fostering communication and co-operation between robotics and cognitive systems research communities
e) Speeding up progress towards smarter robots through targeted competitions

Indicative budget distribution: EUR 155 million split in ICT Call 7 Target outcomes a) and d) EUR 73 million, and 

ICT Call 9 Target outcomes b), c), e) EUR 82 million. 
The objective of ICT research under the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) is to improve the competitiveness of European industry – as well as to enable Europe to master and shape the future developments of these technologies so that the demands of its society and economy are met. The EU Member States have earmarked a total of € 9.1 billion for funding ICT over the duration of FP7; making it the largest research theme in the Cooperation programme, which is itself the largest specific programme of FP7 (with 64% of the total budget).

€780 Million for Strategic ICT Research in 2011

The European Commission has announced Sept 27th, one of the biggest calls ever for information and communications technology (ICT) research proposals under the EU's research framework programmes. The announcement was made at Europe's largest event for ICT research and innovation, ICT 2010-Digitally Driven. It will result in project funding of € 780 million in 2011. This funding will advance research on the future internet, robotics, smart and embedded systems, photonics, ICT for energy efficiency, health and well-being in an ageing society, and more. Under the Digital Agenda for Europe (see IP/10/581, MEMO/10/199 and MEMO/10/200), the Commission has committed to maintaining the pace of a 20% yearly increase of the annual ICT R&D budget at least until 2013.
More than 100 groundbreaking (ICT) research projects funded by the EU are being showcased at the "ICT 2010-Digitally Driven" conference and exhibition in Brussels Expo, among them the project “Kompaï the robot” and iCub. 
The Kompaï robot is designed to assist ill, disabled or ageing people who need help to lead independent lives at home. The robot can speak, understand what is said, find its way around the house, and even access internet services. It reminds users of meetings with friends and family, it can keep track of shopping lists or set up a videoconference on the internet so the users can talk to their doctors. French company Robosoft has designed Kompaï. Other research partners are from Austria, France and Hungary.

iCub can sit, crawl and pick up objects with its five-fingered hands. By watching, listening and touching, the robot learns from its surroundings – just like a child would. There is a growing need for household robots with cognitive skills to tackle the challenge of the ageing society. Assistive robots need to perform household chores like bringing medicine or serving a drink to help the elderly or physically impaired. More than 20 laboratories in the world have adopted iCub. The project was carried out by universities and research centres in Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. 

€ 600 Million for European Robotics Research

The European Robotics Research Program with start year 2000 has involved more than 900 participants in over 120 projects with a total funding of € 600 million. EU has contributed with appr. € 450 million. More than 6.000 man-months have been funded in cognitive vision, cognitive systems, advanced robotics and interaction projects.

Within the FP7 (2007-2013) about 50 new projects have been launched, of these are 19 related to Call 4. Research topics span from bio-inspired locomotion, motor control, dexterous manipulation, haptics and robot vision, to human-robot interaction and sensor networks.

According to a recent Global Robotics Analysis conduced by Infonaut nearly 50% of the world's robotics researchers are from Europe. Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain are the leading robotics research countries with totally 5.000 researchers.

A network analysis of the European robotics research community shows the dominance of a small group of high ranked researchers, who are driving the European robotics research agenda and its scientific outcomes.

The great challenge for the coming years will be to transfer scientific knowledge and technology faster and more competitive into new products and solutions that can strengthen European industry and contribute to sustainable growth and prosperity in Europe.

European robotics is aware of this challenge as demonstrated at the first joint EUROP/EURON meeting in San Sebastian, where academia and industry discussed plans to speed up European robotics research and development.

New Robotics Training Network offers 10 research positions

The INTeractive RObotics Research Network, INTRO, a 4-year EU funded Initial Training Network (ITN) in the Marie-Curie People Programme (FP7) coordinated by the University of Umea, Sweden is offering 10 research positions (8 PhD student positions starting in 2010 and 2 post-doctoral positions starting in 2011) in the interdisciplinary areas of Interactive Robotics; Cooperative Robot Learning, Cognitive Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and Intelligent Interface Design.

INTRO aims to create a new generation of robotic researchers with a broad understanding of the research and technologies needed to build intelligent robots that function in close interaction with humans in unstructured, changing “real word” conditions. The training has a strong multidisciplinary approach complemented by specialized domain knowledge. Young researchers will work closely with industries, endowing them with insight and understanding of the industrial product life-cycle and valuable hands-on experience of top-level industrial robot development.

Academic and industrial partners in this network are coming from Sweden, Israel, Germany, Belgium, France and UK.

8 Million Euro for a Robot Hand

A research consortium including nine partners from six EU countries - France, UK, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Germany - has started the four year research project HANDLE coordinated by the university Pierre and Marie Curie of Paris. With a budget of 8 million Euro the researchers will try to understand how humans perform the manipulation of objects in order to replicate grasping and skilled in-hand movements with an anthropomorphic artificial hand, and thereby move robot grippers from current best practice towards more autonomous, natural and effective articulated hands. The project implies not only focusing on technological developments but also working with fundamental multidisciplinary research aspects in order to endow the robotic hand system with advanced perception capabilities, high level feedback control and elements of intelligence that allow recognition of objects and context, reasoning about actions and a high degree of recovery from failure during the execution of dexterous tasks.

This collaborative project is funded by the European Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme FP7, as part of theme 2: Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics, under grant agreement 231640 with 6.35 million Euro.

Robotics in Agriculture Research Program

The agricultural industry is behind other industries in using robots because the sort of jobs involved in agriculture are not straight forward and many repetitive tasks are not exactly the same everytime. The main area of application of robots in agriculture is at the harvesting stage and robots are designed to replace human labour.


ICT-AGRI is the acronym for the project which has the full title “Coordination of European Research within ICT and Robotics in Agriculture and Related Environmental Issues”.

The overall goal of ICT-AGRI is to strengthen the European Research Area and develop a common European research agenda concerning ICT and robotics in agriculture. ICT-AGRI is funded by the European Commission's ERA-NET scheme under the 7th Framework Programme for Research.

ICT-AGRI has 18 partner organisations that finance or manage national or regional research programmes in Europe and associated countries. Many of the partner organisations will contribute funding for joint calls in the area of ICT and Robotics in Agriculture and related Environment Issues. The research projects will be funded using a real common pot or a virtual common pot instrument.

Some examples of earlier European agri-robot projects:

Researchers from the University of Warwick's horticultural arm, Warwick HRI, and its manufacturing engineering section, Warwick Manufacturing Group, are working on a number of robotics and automation products that will vastly reduce the labour costs of farmers and growers. Those projects include a robotic mushroom picker, a robot grass cutter, Aeropick, an inflatable conveyor belt system to aid the agricultural and horticultural harvesting process that offers huge savings in labour costs and an significant increases in productivity.

In the Netherlands Wageningen University are researching in small machinery and robots for agriculture. A Field Robot Event tested the tiny machines’ ability to navigate and detect weeds.

In Denmark research groups have developed a plant nursing robot (Hortibot(2007)), a computer assisted slope mowing robot Casmobot, , a robotic fruit picker is under development.

The Danish Agrobotic Network has been launched 2009 as part of a program with the main objective to further expand the cooporation and development within the agro-robotic field.

If you have any information about ongoing agro-robotics projects please comment or send an email.

A Health Care Robotics Roadmap for Europe

The European Commission has assigned the Dutch innovation agency TNO the task of exploring the possible healthcare applications of robotics. Together with eighty experts from around the world, TNO has developed a roadmap that identifies, among other things, the most promising areas of innovation. Six of these are contained in the roadmap:
* Smart medical capsules
* Robotised surgery
* Smart Intelligent prosthesis
* Robotised analysis of motion coordination and therapy
* Robotised patient monitoring systems
* Robot-supported psychic, cognitive and social therapy

TNO Health Care Robotics Innovations Map

Key findings of the road map study:
* Robotics hold the promise of addressing some major healthcare issues.
* The field of robotics in healthcare is in its infancy – industry, government and research can still exert influence.
* There is a need to bridge the difficult transitions from laboratories to trials and from trials to regular healthcare practice.
* Systematic support to research is needed for progress to be made.
* Addressing ethical and legal problems should be an integral part of any research programme in this field.
* Awareness must be raised through a flanking communication programme.

More information at TNO Robotics for Healthcare

Open Robotics Development - ECHORD Opening Event

The European Clearing House for Open Robotics Development (ECHORD) is a new EU-funded project aimed to reinforce cooperation between the industry and the scientific research in robotics. ECHORD is coordinated by Professor Knoll, Technical University of Munich. The project's international orientation and its positioning in the existing robotics landscape are emphasized by the participation of the University of Naples Federico II (Prof. Siciliano) and the University of Coimbra in Portugal (Prof. Pires).
The industry can support research groups in the purchase of robotic equipment and the development of experiments in a series of selected scenarios, that are scientifically interesting and commercially relevant.

ECHORD Opening Event will be held September 4, 2009, 10 am – 4 pma t the Deutsches Museum, Ehrensaal Munich, Germany

Speakers will include:

• Horst Forster - Director of Directorate E "Digital Content and Cognitive Systems", Directorate-General for "Information Society and Media", European Commission
• Prof. Dr. Roland Siegwart – Autonomous Systems Lab , ETH, Zürich
• Ulf-Göran Norefors - Vice President ABB Automation Technologies, Sweden

Robotics Boost for Europe

The European Commission has announced a policy to boost European robotics. The European Union will double its investments between 2007 and 2010 with almost € 400 million to support European robotics research. This ambitious programme aims to forge stronger links between academia and industry, and plans to fund a widespread experimentation by academic researchers and industry.

"There is a clear window of opportunity for automation industries in Europe – in particular robotics – not just to maintain leadership, but to grow further and to move higher up the value chain", said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media at Automatica in Munich this week. "To achieve this, the industry has to intensify its efforts in several areas".

The European Union has today a strong position in industrial robots for automation: about one third of all industrial robots are produced in Europe. The robotics market's growth rate will form an important part of the world economy within the next two decades: the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) estimates the current world market for industrial robots at about € 4 billion and forecasts a 4.2% increase per year until 2010.

Service robots that operate outside the manufacturing domain offer opportunities for new applications and market expansion: according to the IFR, growth in this market is expected to reach between 10% and 15% per year between now and 2010 and the number of professional service robots will grow from 40,000 in 2006 to 75,000 in 2010. Service robots are used in many sectors, e.g. for the distribution of goods, for cleaning vehicles, in agriculture and in medical applications.

Robotics is strategic for Europe's future competitiveness. Manufacturing will only be maintained in higher wage regions such as Europe through automation. Automation also plays a key role in ensuring a sustainable production and minimizing wasteful use of resources.Finally it will contribute to help Europe's ageing society by compensating for a declining labour force.