OpenDR Research Project

OpenDR “Open Deep Learning for Robotics Toolkit”, is a new EU 2020 Project which was launched at January 1st 2020 and aims to develop a modular, open and nonproprietary toolkit for core robotic functionalities by harnessing deep learning to provide advanced perception and cognition capabilities, meeting in this way the general requirements of robotics applications in the areas of healthcare, agri-food and agile production. The OpenDR project is coordinated by Prof. Anastasios Tefas at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and it will be running throughout the period of January 2020 to December 2022. OpenDR will enable real-time robotic visual perception on high-resolution data and enhance the robotic autonomy exploiting lightweight deep learning for deployment on robots and devices with limited computational resources. In addition, it aims to propose, design, train and deploy models that go beyond static computer vision, towards active robot perception, providing deep human-centric and environment active robot perception as well as enhanced robot navigation, action and manipulation capabilities. OpenDR’s expected impact is to improve the technical capabilities in robotics by providing easily deployable, efficient and novel Deep Learning tools, as well as to lower the technical barriers by providing a modular and open platform for developing Deep Learning for Robotics tools. Concerning industry, The OpenDR consortium consists of 5 top-ranked academic and research institutes: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), Tampere University (Finland), Aarhus University (Denmark), Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), University of Freiburg (Germany) and 3 leading industry partners: CYBERBOTICS (Switzerland), PAL Robotics (Spain) and AgroIntelli (Denmark). The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 871449.