The European Robotics Forum 2016 (ERF 2016) has announced the winners of the Georges Giralt PhD Award in Robotics, the 2016 euRobotics Technology Transfer Award and the Entrepreneurship Award 2016.

The winner of the 1st TechTransfer Award, seen as one of the ERF's most prominent activities, is the project "Robirds: from an idea to an animal-friendly revolution in bird control". Robirds are remotely controlled robotic birds of prey, with the realistic appearance and weight of their living counterparts. Robirds use flapping wing flight as a means of propulsion, with a flight performance comparable to real birds.

The 2nd TechTransfer Award: "From legged robots to walking excavators – active balancing of an all-terrain chassis" was granted to Marco Hutter, ETH Zurich, Stefan Tagmann, Menzi Muck AG, and Gonzalo Rey, Moog inc.

The 3rd TechTransfer prize was awarded to the project "POINT: The tool for risk analysis and cost effectiveness of HRC workplaces and the generation of safe motions for robot assistants" (two brothers Sami Haddadin and Simon Haddadin from Kastanienbaum GmbH and AlinAlbuSchäffer, Institute of Roboticsand Mechatronics, German Aerospace Center).

The European Robotics Forum 2016

European Robotics Forum 2016 took place between 21 – 23 March and was attended by 760 European robotics experts, most of them from Germany, Slovenia, England and Italy. The Forum featured more than 60 workshops and a robotics exhibition presenting a number of companies, including Yaskawa Europe, ABB, Fanuc, IDMIND, incubed IT, iniLabs, Joanneum Research, GC tronic, KUKA, NCCR Robotics, Nova Labs, Optoforce, Ortelio Ltd, PAL Robotics, Robotnik, Schunk, Shadow, Robot Company, Taurob, The Biorobotics Institute – ScuolaSuperioreSant'Anna, University in Zagreb – Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Slovenian companies: Daihen Varstroj, Kolektor, L-TEK, RLS Merilnatehnika, and others.

The ERF 2017 will take place in Edinburgh, UK, 22–24 March 2017.