ECHORD (European Clearing House for Open Robotics Development) is an EU-funded project within the Seventh Framework Program, aiming to strengthen the cooperation between scientific research and industry in European robotics. ECHORD started in January 2009 and will last until February 2013. ECHORD is managed by a core consortium of three universities – Technische Universität München, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II and Universidade de Coimbra – coordinated by Professor Alois Knoll, Technische Universität München.

In the context of ECHORD, small-scale projects, so-called “experiments” are conducted. After the third and final call was closed, ECHORD now consists of more than 80 experimenting partners who will carry out more than 50 experiments. Via these experiments, ECHORD will bring about a large‐scale introduction of robotic equipment into European research institutions. This is expected to result in both tangible and measurable outcomes in terms of the accelerated development of technologies, as well as the deployment of robotics technology into new scenarios for the direct application of research results.

For ECHORD, three future-orientated scenarios have been defined:

human‐robot co‐working

hyper flexible cells

cognitive factories

The foremost purpose of the scenarios is to create an environment that is both scientifically challenging to research institutions and commercially relevant to robot manufacturers. For the three scenarios, a set of research foci have been identified which serve as the reference points for the expected scientific progress of proposals for experiments:

human-robot interfacing and safety

robot hands and complex manipulation

mobile manipulators and cooperation

networked robots and systems