Heron Robots
Scope Vision People Challenges A few things we have done Contacts
A new science-based robotics, grounded on new disruptive Physical AI science

Scope

Heron Robots is on a mission to reimagine artificial intelligence by studying how natural intelligence evolved from living things (plants and animals alike) and using what we learn to create revolutionary new robots that can adapt to their environments.

Vision

In spite of all the great things that have happened, AI and robotics might run across some major roadblocks soon. Integrating and augmenting the current mechatronic design paradigm with technologies like Probabilistic Robotics and Machine Learning does not solve the major problems it faces. In the mechatronic paradigm, the system's complexity increases as more complicated behaviors are implemented. Following the goals of the previous RoboCom Flagship proposal and RoboCom++ FET-Flagship Proof-of-concept project, as well as the long-standing teachings of the ShanghAI Lectures, we must go beyond mechatronics. Following the Cartesian view, the present method of control is top-down, and the robot's "body" and "mind" are clearly separated. The self-organization of loosely linked networks of embodied agents is the basis of intelligent agents in nature, who operate according to an entirely different paradigm. Robots of the future will be structured similarly to intelligent living things.

This vision is our goal.

People

The CEO and Founder

Fabio Bonsignorio photo
Fabio Bonsignorio
Prof. Fabio Bonsignorio is ERA Chair in AI for Robotics at FER, University of Zagreb, Croatia. He has been visiting professor at the Biorobotic Institute of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa from 2014 to 2019. He has been a professor in the Department of System Enginering and Automation at the University Carlos III of Madrid until 2014. In 2009 he got the Santander Chair of Excellence in Robotics at the same university. alla stessa università. He has been working for some 20 years in the high tech industry before joining the research community. He is a pioneer and has introduced the topic of Reproducibility of results in Robotics and AI. He is a pioneer in the application of the blockchain to robotics and IA (smart cities, smart land, smart logistics, circular economy...). He coordinatesthe Topic Group of euRobotics aisbl about Experiment Replication, Benchmarking, Challenges and Competitions. He is co-chair of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society (RAS) Technical Commitee, TC-PEBRAS (PErformance and Benchmarking of Robotics and Autonomous Systems). He is a Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.’ Senior Member of IEEE and member of the Order of the Engineers of Genoa, Italy. He coordinated the task force robotics, in the G2net,an EU network studying the application of Machine Learning and Deep Learning to Gravitational wave research, Geophysics and Robotics. He has given invited seminars and talks in many places: MIT Media Lab, Max Planck Institute, Imperial College, Politecnico di Milano in Shenzhen, London, Madrid, Warsaw, San Petersburg, Seoul, Rio Grande do Sul.

Challenges

Our goals require that we cope with a deeper issue: how to decouple the mind-brain-body nexus.

This challenge is far-reaching and affects fields other than robotics and artificial intelligence.

From a scientific and humanistic perspective (since it is fundamental to our reality and our knowledge of it) as well as an economic and industrial one, it has far-reaching consequences.

Using what we've learned from studying how the brain works in reverse, we could one day create artificial systems with extraordinary levels of intelligence and flexibility.

We require a mathematical model that takes into account the interplay between complex system dynamics, computation as a means of information processing, emergence and self-organization of behaviors, (sub)symbolic representation of reality, and "sentience" in the engineering and hard sciences sense.

It is crucial to model the relationship between system dynamics and information processing capacities, also known as 'morphological computation', from this point of view.

A few things we have done

A non exhaustive list

We work with CNR-INM to disrupt marine robotics: heron-at-cnr logo

Contacts

if you have any questions drop an email to research@heronrobots.com or investors@heronrobots.com

Heron Robots



Real Robots are coming!

Credits

HeronRobots logo
Heron Robots S.r.l.
Via Malta 3/7 – 16121 GENOVA
www.heronrobots.com
P. IVA 01726850991- R.E.A. 430992 capitale sociale € 100.000