In the future, more and more service and assistance robots will not only support people in their own four walls, especially with care, but also in public spaces or with difficult and dangerous tasks. A key challenge here is the interaction between humans and these robots in everyday life. Against this background, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has decided to fund three competence centers with different specific application domains for assistance robots. The transfer center 'RimA - Robots in Everyday Life' is intended to act as a link between the centers and promote efficient, scientific and technical exchange. The work of the transfer center is managed by the Karlsruhe FZI Research Center for Information Technology with the participation of the Free University of Berlin, TÜV Süd and the University of Bonn. The overarching goal of the transfer center is to support the partners of the centers and other institutions in the transfer of new robotics technologies and solutions into everyday life.

The initial development of a new, open knowledge transfer platform for service and assistance robots and the corresponding community building are important cornerstones for the sustainable further development of service robotics. For the project partners, the key to new, attractive robotics applications is interaction with humans. However, robustness, performance and technical maturity as well as legal requirements and viable business models are crucial for the transfer from the laboratory to real applications.

FZI project manager Dr. Arne Rönnau emphasizes: "Assistance and service robotics also has huge potential outside the factory halls. Our goal is to bring more service and assistance robots from research into application - and thus into our everyday lives - through our activities, not only from the three competence centers, but also from and with the robotics community. To this end, we not only want to organize attractive, exciting robotics competitions, but also vividly present the work of all partners in the media and show what service robotics from Germany can do for our everyday lives."

As consortium leader, the FZI Research Center for Information Technology sees an initial focus in the successful implementation and establishment of the RimA knowledge platform. The FZI will thus establish a national contact point for future users, manufacturers and integrators, as well as research institutions and universities for the topic of 'service robotics in everyday life'. The coordination with the BMBF competence centers and the resulting development of the forms of interaction will form the basis for the comparison of different robotics solutions. In the benchmarks to be developed, the results of individual partners will be evaluated objectively and independently of robots in order to identify potential and further develop the overall ecosystem.

Annual, open robotics competitions are also an important concern of the FZI, which should increase both the further development of the benchmarks and the added value of the knowledge transfer platform. The University of Bonn's contribution focuses on human-robot interactions, competitions and a knowledge platform, while TÜV Süd's project focuses on legal and normative requirements as well as testing and certification for robots. The Free University of Berlin is focusing its project activities on usage options, business models and IT entrepreneurship.

RimA will work closely with the RA3 competence centers, which will not start until 2022, from the very beginning and will then support them in their respective areas of focus for three years. The first step will be joint workshops on the various interaction approaches and open source software.