News

Now that the DARKO project is completed, we thank you for all the support and interest throughout the years! The video from the final stakeholder meeting - held at K.I. Fabrik, Munich in Germany - is now ready. Please find that and other videos from the project at the webpage of the DARKO project coordinating research group of Örebro university: Videos – Robot Navigation and Perception Lab - Örebro University

The final integration of the DARKO project spanned over several weeks in April, May and June, and focused on deploying, integrating, and testing all features developed during the final project period. Three integration events in Stuttgart (ARENA2036), Pisa (Università di Pisa) and Munich (K.I. Fabrik) involved both on-site and online collaboration, marked by an intense and productive work environment. The final public DARKO milestone demonstration on June 5, 2025 was located at the Deutsches Museum inMunich. The demo coincided with…

We are happy that the following DARKO innovations have been acknowledged by the European Commission.Read more at Innovation Radar > Discover great EU-funded innovations (europa.eu) and search for DARKO.

The integration phase in Stuttgart team was an intense and dedicated effort, characterized by extended working hours, including late nights and early mornings. This period was marked by the coming together of highly motivated and skilled teams, all focused on ensuring the highest levels of safety, efficiency, and smooth operation of the robotic systems. The primary goal during this phase was the successful deployment and integration of all the new features that had been meticulously developed and refined in the…

Work is progressing towards the realisation of the initial hardware platform to be used in DARKO. The fleet of three robots is under construction, and will look similar to this concept drawing. Another notable exciting update is that we have developed a new prototype of a variable-stiffness wrist, which will improve efficiency and performance for both grasping and throwing. We have recently contributed two benchmarks that will make it easier to fairly and comprehensively compare new state-of-the-art methods for motion…

As of today, the DARKO web site is populated with some more useful content. We will be posting on-going updates here, especially in relation to milestones, and noteworthy results and activities in the project. Of course, you can also read more about the project, its objectives, and the partners involved.

We have organised a workshop during the ECMR 2021 conference with the title "How good is your map? Robotic Map Assessment and Standardisation". See https://goodmap21.github.io The workshop was quite well attended, with a wide cast of invited speakers from academia and industry: Giorgio Grisetti, Sapienza University of Rome"SLAM: what still bugs me"Magnus Lindhé, Electrolux"A consumer robot perspective on map quality"Max Pfingsthorn, OFFIS"Can we make more accurate and actionable semantic maps with human and tactile input?"Naoki Akai, Nagoya University"Detection of localization…

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