Months of planning came to fruition in November when the Central Event for this year’s European Robotics Week took place in Zaragoza, capital of the historic region of Aragon, Spain. In reality the Central Event was several events in one, each one carefully planned and delivered with its own specific participants and audience. For euRobotics, the Aragon Institute of Technology (ITA) and HispaRob, the Spanish robotics association, the week of the Central Event show-cased the hard work and talents of all three organisations and underlined their ability to work together to produce a series of events and activities. According to the feedback these were very well received by their intended audiences.
The Association was very well-represented in Zaragoza, which lies between Madrid and Barcelona and which is connected to both cities by Spain’s impressive AVE high-speed train. A joint meeting of the euRobotics Board of Directors and Topic Group coordinators served as a curtain-raiser for the week. ITA, acting as host institution, was generous with its space and personnel, providing meeting rooms, exhibition space and the auditorium which served as the venue for the Institutional Event, the opening ceremony for the Central Event. This event gave the 50-70 or so attendees a series of welcomes and presentations and two panel discussions. Among the highlights was a screening of a short award-winning film – Conversations with a Monkey (in Spanish with English sub-titles), which focused on a film-maker’s dialogue with his robot-embodied AI as he searched for creative inspiration. Before the screening, the audience were served with popcorn, an added touch that produced smiles around the auditorium. During the panel discussion that followed, the audience were also able to hear directly from the film’s creator Eduardo Grojo, the writer and director of Conversations with a Monkey. As a pre-Christmas treat to yourself, why not take a 15-minute break to watch the film? Here’s the link to Conversations with a Monkey. You’ll have to supply your own popcorn, though.)
A second panel discussion on the theme of women in robotics in a world of AI (see separate story in this edition) provided the closing stage of the Institutional Event.
That same evening in central Zaragoza, the Ibercaja Foundation hosted the AIR (AI and Robotics) Festival, in which school parties and families came to be entertained and fascinated with a series of hands-on demonstrations and other activities which brought the world of robots to life.
The euRobotics Office team members Inge Rehorst and Javier Luque had been working with their local event partners for weeks, even months to make the Central Event a success. Even so, they were nervous about the AIR Festival, not knowing if anyone would turn up to the event. They needn’t have worried! Hundreds of children visited the Festival along with teachers and parents. “The atmosphere of noise and fun was amazing!” said Inge afterwards. “ERW is about public engagement, especially for young people. The AIR Festival was a great example of how to engage children. Some of the animators were fantastic. They really captured the kids’ imaginations. Overall it really couldn’t have gone any better. It was a real showcase for robots.”
When the noise finally subsided later in the evening, the Central Event came to a close, although that wasn’t the end of ERW in Zaragoza. the next day, colleagues from the Spanish Robotics Association Hisparob held their own one-day conference back at ITA, just a short tram-ride away from the city centre.
For the Central Event it was a return to a level of activity not seen since Poznań, Poland in 2019, before the pandemic changed everything. For euRobotics itself, the benefit of playing such an active part in the event will be assessed in the coming days. But as an example of collaboration between the Association and local national robotics organisations to create joint activities of this kind, it was very impressive and could serve as a model for the future. Time will tell.