Robots are moving machines subject to gravity and facing the physical world. Robotics aims at exploring the computational foundations of the physical actions. Its objective is to provide machines with motion intelligence. Robotics and AI are rapidly transitioning from research labs to the real world with unprecedented effects on society. Beyond the classical approaches in decision making and reasoning, the current success of AI in data science-oriented applications (with impressive progress in many domains related to ICT, e.g. image processing, natural language, medicine, etc.) has the potential to renew the way to design and program moving machines able to autonomously face the complexity of their interactions with the physical world.

In his report on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cédric Villani, Fields medalist, considers that robotics and AI go hand-in-hand in the collective imagination but that the two fields are yet to truly converge. According to Villani, many robotics applications are not within the purview of AI and vice-versa, but a whole field combining these two disciplines is ready and waiting to be explored, in which Europe has everything necessary to play a leading role. Villani suggests that this development could take place in a French-German cooperation in partnership with Italy. The objective of the present symposium is precisely to strengthen ties between these countries and explore the scientific challenges in the strategic field of Robotics AI.

France and Germany play a leading role in Europe, both in AI and in robotics. The objective of the symposium is to reinforce the current cooperation by gathering leading researchers of both countries and engaging a dialog between the different stakeholders and representatives of public institutions and agencies.