Europe is facing major problems and a number of challenges threatening the future quality of life and prosperity of EU citizens. Robots can be a solution to some of these challenges. Robots based on the current technological and scientific paradigm, although successful, encounter serious problems to perform daily life activities and complex tasks in real-world poorly structured environments. In fact, in the mechatronic paradigm adopted in current robots system complexity increases and robustness decreases more than linearly when complexity in the desired behaviours and application environments increases.

The main objectives of this workshop is to offer new insights on the next generations of Robot Companions for citizens, capable of overcoming the inherent limitations of current robots. It aims at identifying new design paradigms, grounded on Nature principles in order to develop the Robots of the future which will interact and co-operate with humans in disruptively new ways.