Summary
- Closed for EoI
- Profile Type
- Research & Development Request
- POD Reference
- RDRSK20250911017
- Term of Validity
- 11 September 2025 - 11 September 2026
- Company's Country
- Slovakia
- Type of partnership
- Research and development cooperation agreement
- Targeted Countries
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Czechia
- Estonia
- Cyprus
- Latvia
- Hungary
- Lithuania
- Malta
- Greece
- Slovenia
- Slovakia
- Poland
- Albania
- Romania
- Portugal
- Moldova
- Serbia
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Georgia
- North Macedonia
- Montenegro
- Mayotte
- Turkey
- Spain
- Saint Martin
- Guadeloupe
- Reunion
- French Guiana
- Ukraine
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General information
- Short Summary
- The consortium that is preparing proposal titled „Active Inference and Robot Bodies (AInRB)“ to be submitted within COST Actions with the deadline October 21, 2025 is looking for researchers, representatives of SMEs, local governmental organisations or agencies (national, regional or local), NGO or associations that would like to join the proposal. The project aims to advance cognitive robotics and needs interdisciplinary approach.
- Full Description
-
One of the major obstacles to a full-scale adoption of robots to carry out tasks in common, everyday environments is the lack of a principled, comprehensive understanding of two key components in intelligent behaviors, that is, (i) the underlying cognitive principles which may inform robot behavior while interacting with the environment and the humans therein, and (ii) the relationship between such cognitive principles and the variety of robot embodiments.
Traditionally, approaches to the design of a robot cognitive architecture have explored the interplay of sensing, reasoning, and action, even introducing within symbolic, logic-based formalisms normative behaviors loosely informed by tenets of cognitive science. Conversely, the recent popularity of such artificial intelligence approaches as multi-modal foundation models has led to the design of end-to-end neural architectures with impressing performance in several niche applications.
However, despite their intrinsic, conceptual and methodological differences, both traditional and recent approaches suffer from relevant limitations as far as the design of a cognitive architecture is concerned. Most notably, they still share a “sense-plan-act”, dataflow-like approach which do not consider recent advances in cognitive science and neuroscience research, and they are conceptually based on a sharp, Cartesian, separation between the robot body and the robot “mind”, whereas the design of a modern cognitive architecture should leverage the implications of Moravec’s paradox about the interplay between cognitive aspects and computational as well as sensorimotor cognitive aspects.
The goal of AInRB is to support the conversation and accelerate the discussion for a normative approach to the design of a cognitive architecture for robots which is (i) informed by the latest theories in cognitive science and neuroscience and (ii) can leverage both the robot body and “mind” to support advanced robot cognitive capabilities.
AInRB is designed to establish a robust interdisciplinary network in the field of cognitive robotics.
AInRB aims to pursue the following objectives:
SO1. Develop a normative framework that integrates Active Inference with principles of robot embodiment and morphological computation for designing advanced robot cognitive architectures.
SO2. Identify and model major open challenges in robotics as instances of the proposed theoretical framework, comparing with existing solutions and proposing initial design-level implementations.
SO3. Implement and refine software models of robotic use cases, evolving them from theoretical mockups to advanced models, increasing technology readiness with each iteration.
SO4. Map and allocate model structures to specific robot embodiments, integrating decentralized processing units and soft materials for optimized hardware-software interaction.
SO5. Synthesize best practices and guidelines for next-generation cognitive architectures, assessing their implications across various contexts and exploring social, ethical, and legal considerations.
In order to achieve these objectives, AInRB will propose a series of activities such as meetings, conferences and training schools, including specific activities related to participatory design and living labs. Women and researchers under 40 would be much appreciated, not excluding others.
The countries of interest are: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Türkiye, Ukraine, French Guiana, Guadaloupe, Mayotte, Reunion Island and Saint-Martin, Azores and Madeira, Canary Islands. - Technical Specification or Expertise Sought
- Consortium wants to include more experts especially from related research areas such as educational, environmental, social science (psycology, neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy), ethics, law, policy department; engineering (medical, mechanical, systems).
- Sustainable Development Goals
- Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
- Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
- Goal 5: Gender Equality
- Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
Partner Sought
- Expected Role of a Partner
- It would be great to include someone who is already working on these topics, given the fact that the COST Action doesn’t fund research in itself. If our proposal is approved, it will span four years and will focus on funding meetings, conferences, training schools, including specific activities related to participatory design and living labs. Active participation and/or organisation of those activities is expected.
- Type and Size of Partner
- SME <=10
- University
- SME 11-49
- Other
- Big company
- R&D Institution
- SME 50 - 249
- Type of partnership
- Research and development cooperation agreement
Call details
- Framework program
- Horizon Europe
- Call title and identifier
-
COST Actions
- Coordinator required
-
No
- Deadline for EoI
- Deadline of the call
- Web link to the call
- https://www.cost.eu/funding/open-call-a-simple-one-step-application-process/
- Project title and acronym
-
Active Inference and Robot Bodies (AInRB)
- Horizon Europe
Dissemination
- Market keywords
- 08002004 - Robotics
- Targeted countries
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Czechia
- Estonia
- Cyprus
- Latvia
- Hungary
- Lithuania
- Malta
- Greece
- Slovenia
- Armenia
- Slovakia
- Poland
- Albania
- Romania
- Portugal
- Moldova
- Serbia
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Georgia
- North Macedonia
- Montenegro
- Mayotte
- Turkey
- Spain
- Saint Martin
- Guadeloupe
- Reunion
- French Guiana
- Ukraine