This week, I attended the European Robotics Forum 2025, which took place in Stuttgart from the 25th to the 27th of March. Since I’m mostly used to academic conferences like ICRA/IROS or developer conferences like ROSCon/FOSDEM, it was interesting to experience a different type of conference as a first time attendee. I’m glad I had the opportunity to write this article for Weekly Robotics. In this piece, I’ll reflect on the talks I attended, the exhibitors and their robots, and the topics that arose during the event. Enjoy!

Day 1

I started at the ERF immediately with the press conference, which featured a panel of various members of the organizing committee of the European Robotics Forum. Many reporters had questions about Europe’s Humanoid strategy, but I managed to get a different question in, namely if ‘Embodied AI’ is the new name for a robot now or if it stands for something more. Prof. Dr. Marco Huber explained that it stems from the embodied intelligence theory, which states that true intelligence cannot emerge if it is not experienced in a body that can move and sense. Dr. Matthias Peissner added that the environment the body interacts with also provides opportunities for learning, plus a sense of urgency because software can’t die but hardware can. Those are some very philosophical answers that will keep me awake at night!

After the press conference, I went straight to the exhibition halls just to get my bearings. There were a total of 65 exhibitors, spread out over several halls and places, with a few hidden in some corners here and there, so it took a little while before I managed to find all the spots. One of the companies I talked to was Avular, a mobile robotics company from Eindhoven, the Netherlands, which was one of the few drone-based companies on the floor. Given my background in aerial robotics, this is, of course, something that I’m interested in. They make custom-made hardware for researchers, so they don’t have to design and build their platform from scratch. Since many university departments still do this, they were at ERF to convince them otherwise, so that PhD students can actually focus on their research. I can’t disagree with that!

After the coffee break, I attended the workshop ‘How can European regions stimulate innovations in robotics?’ with a panel discussion with several leaders representing different robotic ecosystems of different countries in the European Union. Here, there was a discussion that funding is not coming from the big industries like it is in the US, so it needs to come from the local governments, and in many countries (like my home country, The Netherlands), they are actually cutting funding completely. The audience also commented that robotics is often over-regulated, which is understandable, but it does not leave any room for experimentation and creativity. This, according to some, is one of the reasons why the US and China are leaps ahead of Europe. It is definitely a dilemma, since regulations are there for a reason, but it is creating a barrier for the innovation culture within European robotics.

At the end of the day, I joined the charity Run, or rather the walking alternative that they provided. Since I wouldn’t have time to shower and change before the evening reception started, just walking was a good alternative to see a bit of the city, contribute to the charity, and still be fresh and well afterwards. The charity run/walk was sponsored by Intrinsic, and they collected more than 4000 Euros. Afterwards, at the ERF welcome reception, I managed to talk to quite a few ERF regulars, including Morten Nielsen from SDU. He is a staple name within the ERF community and casts a wide web of contacts along the European robotics network. Everyone knows him, and he knows many, so if you are looking for a certain company or technology that he can perhaps connect you to, he can point you in the right direction. He gave me plenty of tips and tricks to navigate ERF as a newcomer.

Day 2

In the morning, I decided to attend the Georges Giralt’s PhD Award presentations, where four selected PhD candidates presented their hard work. Interestingly, it appears that all of them focused on the control of deformable objects, flexible sensing skin, or compliant mechanisms, which sounds very much related to soft robotics. I very much enjoyed the presentation by David Hardman on his research on how to achieve multi-zone sensing with sensitive skin. I then went to the keynote speech by Dieter Fox, the head of robotics at Nvidia. Dieter talked about ‘Where is RobotGPT?’ and mentioned that good simulation, augmented data sets, and hierarchical action models will help it further. However, RobotGPT is not there yet, and Dieter mentioned that tactile multipoint sensing would very much help it further for manipulators. He and the PhD student I just mentioned should collaborate!

After the keynote, I had a great talk with one of the platinum partners of ERF, namely Saxion. This is a university for applied sciences located in the Netherlands. They explained that the focus is less on teaching the theory but on executing the techniques in the real world where they can make a difference. They have more collaborations with industrial partners than most universities, and they have been regulars at ERF ever since 2020. Their focus is to set up European projects and grants with the help of the industry, and their booth was quite impressive with all kinds of mobile vehicles, quadcopters, and a robot dog. The most impressive was an aerial vehicle that could be used by firefighters to direct a fire hose in the air. Just imagine the control theory that goes into dealing with that kind of force!

I also talked to quite a few distributors of robot systems at ERF, like Fundino, NEXT, and Generation Robots. They told me that they are here at ERF because many researchers show up at the event, and they’d like to sell their robots to them. Many of the companies that make their own products were there for both, to make their name known in the industry and to incite collaborations and come into contact with researchers for their products. One of those companies is Extend Robotics, a startup providing robot solutions in London, which had a manipulator with a hand that I got to control from a Quest headset. I was able to see the blocks in VR thanks to a 3D camera and use my own hands to pick up the blocks one by one. The latency was minimal, so I didn’t get any motion sickness, and that says a lot coming from me :)

After lunch, I attended the workshop session “The Future of Robotics in Europe - Is there a common strategy?” Here again, a panel of several policymakers within the field discussed the impact of writing down strategies before acting on them. It was also questioned whether we should focus on humanoids and how to combine the different ecosystems of the different countries together. The moderator made an interesting point that if we don’t act in the next 1-2 years, we will lose the robotics market to the US and China. There were numerous notable comments from the audience that there are no strategies to support startups properly to grow and develop actual useful robotics, therefore stifling innovation. I’m starting to see a bit of a trend happening here at ERF.

Day 3

On the last day, I had the urge to discuss robotics development, and luckily, I had that opportunity at the Husarion booth. They are a Polish-based company that makes mobile manipulator platforms for outdoor agriculture purposes (crop picking) to smaller mobile platforms that can be used for education and research. They are active contributors to the ROS framework and actively attend ROSCons as well, but they go to ERF because there is a good mix of researchers and industry. One of their robots used an arm from Franka Robotics, so I went to talk to them afterwards. There, they showed the arm together with a digital twin in Nvidia Isaac, which is the same arm Dieter Fox showed in his presentation yesterday. Franka is also here to mostly reach the researchers and develop the arms so that they can be controlled and measured at the joint level. An interesting observation I made is that the companies that send their actual engineers actually had stickers at their booth. Stickers were unfortunately very rare at ERF (except for Weekly Robotics stickers, of course)

I also managed to count all the robotics platforms on the floor. I counted about 40 manipulators, 30 mobile platforms (with about 8 with an arm), 7 humanoids, 12 drones, 5 robot dogs and… 1 robot cat. Arms were pretty much found at every booth, but the majority of mobile platforms were provided by the TU Delft booth with their open source MIRTE platform and Fiction-lab with their Leo Rovers and the new Ralpha Rover. It is interesting to see that with all the talk about having a humanoid strategy, there were surprisingly not many humanoids on the actual exhibition floor. I was allowed by MAB Robotics to control their Honey Badger robot dog through the exhibit floor with a Steam Deck. They came to ERF to exhibit their motor controllers, which can work underwater.

Talking about water, I ended the day with a workshop on “Marine robotics: challenges, trends and opportunities”, and it was refreshing to see researchers working with real robots on real problems, trying to do hard stuff with the tools that they think are best for them. With a background in aerial robotics, I know some the challenges that they face, but I have gained a whole new level of respect for my colleagues in the sea. Underwater robotics don’t have standard platforms, have to remake their actuators and sensors, and all communication methods are suboptimal (who would have thought water is hard). The manipulation tasks they are doing underwater are perhaps not theoretically hard, but they are a thousand times more difficult. If you don’t believe me, I dare you to sign up for the RAMI Marine Robots Competition for this summer!

Afterthoughts

The European Robotics Forum is an interesting event focused on policy-makers and industry with a healthy mix of academia. This is the first conference that I’ve seen a 50-50 mix of both academic and industry attendees. I was able to have conversations on policy level and developer level (latter is of course more my expertise). The companies and universities who joined ERF had the goal of either getting the word out about the project that they are working out, finding customers for their robotic platforms, but most importantly, to network. One long time attendee of ERF also said that ERF felt like one big family, and yes, It felt much easier to strike first time conversations with people that were not in my field of expertise. There is a good atmosphere to foster collaborations, either on hardware or joining forces for proposal grants.

But there is also a noticeable detachment in what is said, and what is shown. There was a lot of talk about focusing more on humanoid robots, but only 6 humanoids present on the exhibition floor. Most of the attendees I talked to feel that it’s a hype and that we should make platforms suitable for the task at hand, instead of focusing on a subfield of robotics that is one of the most difficult to do (next to maritime, because water). Hopefully, the intentions stated in those panels will quickly come to fruition, so that Europe can be at the forefront of the next breakthrough, instead of trailing behind those that have already been made. To expose easier funding capabilities to enable startups making exciting hardware and applied-focused research institutes will make the difference. I hope to see many new start-ups and projects at ERF 2026 in Stavanger, Norway!

About the author

Kimberly McGuire is an independent roboticist and co-lead of the Aerial Robotics ROS interest group. Kimberly is currently working on projects for simulation for robotics and ROS 2 integration for Windows.