In traffic, in the supermarket or in the factory: in the near future, robots will no longer be standalone machines, but systems that operate and make decisions within the same environment as people. This is placing different demands on the design and development of such robots.

A smart greenhouse that calculates when vegetables need water and more heat. That’s what professor Tamás Keviczky from TU Delft’s 3mE faculty is working on. This approach cuts costs and is good for the environment.

The smarter robots become, the more we will encounter them – at home, in the streets, in shops and in the workplace – and the more they will interact directly with humans. So robots must get wise to human behaviour, says David Abbink.

Drive around a busy Dutch city centre one day and observe everything that happens around you. As a driver, you have to constantly make choices. Does the pedestrian, who is suddenly crossing the road, see you? Will that van give you right of way? What is the mother with a child on the back of her bike planning to do?

Biology is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for robotics. Whether it involves walking, grabbing, flying or swimming, robotics looks with amazement and interest at the rich variety of solutions that evolution has developed.

Robots can perform jobs underwater that are too complex or dangerous for humans. That is, if they can manage on their own. The REMARO project works with PhD students to make marine robotics more reliable.

Robots that safely navigate busy corridors to deliver medicines to nurses. And drones that manoeuvre around people, rubbish bins and poles without smashing things up. This is possible thanks to the models developed by researcher Javier Alonso-Mora from TU Delft.

Video credits: Studio Bravoure, Bas Lammers, Rick Wiegmans, Frits Jan Smit, Geraldo Solisa, Jaimy Siebel, Joost van de Loo, Michiel Bernabela, WEARETHEGOOD, Marieke Mulder and Casper van Eersel.

She is program manager at RoboHouse and one of the driving forces behind the Gazelle Accelerator success story in Europe.

On 19 April 2021 NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter photographed its own shadow, while hovering over the Martian surface. Ten days later two RoboHouse engineers received a badge: “Your code was used for the Mars helicopter!" How great things consist of small contributions in the field of robotics.