news archive

Introducing MOBI - A Mobile Butler for Improved Elderly Care

Oct 6, 2024

Healthcare personnel spend significant time and effort on repetitive tasks that imply physical labor. This leaves them with less time for social interaction with residents of, for example, elderly care homes.

Read More

IDLab-AIRO students awarded for exceptional achievements

Sep 29, 2024

We are thrilled to congratulate Matthias Pex, Louis Adriaens and Ward Goossens, for each being awarded a prestigious prize at their graduation!

Read More

Dwengo Social Robot Competition

Sep 15, 2024

IDLab - AIRO is a proud partner in the social robot competition for secondary schools organized by Dwengo. In this competition students ages 12 to 16 take on the challenge to solve a societally relevant problem using a social robot. The competition is supported by the excellence fund of the Flemish ministry of education.

Read More

Four IEEE RA-L papers in the last year

May 25, 2024

At AIRO we published four IEEE RA-L papers in the last 12 months! While IEEE RA-L doesn’t have the highest impact factor, it is a well-received journal in the robotics and automation community. The publication of four papers in RA-L is a confirmation of our research efforts in the domain of robotics and AI.

Read More

Manipulating Challenging Objects with Collaborative Robots

May 22, 2024

The imec 40 year anniversary celebration ITF World event is a conference that brings more than 2000 technology experts together. We were present with our work on robotic manipulation of challenging objects in the context of a biotechnology lab.

Read More

Our cloth (un)folding competition was a success

May 20, 2024

The ICRA 2024 Cloth Manipulation Competition was a big success! Thanks to the 11 participating teams that took on the challenge of unfolding cloth! More details, code and datasets can be found on our competition page.

Read More

Talking Heads at Flanders Technology and Innovation

Mar 24, 2024

IDLab-AIRO showcased two social robots arguing about contentious topics at the 2024 edition of Flanders Technology and Innovation in Antwerp.

Read More

ICRA 2024 - Cloth Competition

Jan 9, 2024

This year’s Cloth Track of the 9th RGMC focuses on grasp point localisation on hanging cloth items. Teams can build their perception system in the months leading up to the competition, but performance will be evaluated on a dual-arm robot setup live May 13-15 at ICRA 2024 in Yokohama, Japan! You provide the grasp, and we handle the execution on our robots.

Read More

AIRO at Dag Van De Wetenschap 2023

Nov 30, 2023

IDLab-AIRO was present at the yearly dag van de wetenschap (science day) event at the Ghent city library. We presented a prototype of the dictionary search system for Flemish Sign Language (VGT) developed based on our research.

Read More

AI Op School (AI At School) wins Vlaanderen Digitaal Award

Oct 28, 2023

Last Wednesday, our project AI At School won the Flanders Digital Award.

Read More

Wat gebaar jij? AMAI project

Oct 19, 2023

IDLab-AIRO and VGTC are collaborating on a project to bring search functionality to the Flemish Sign Language dictionary. (Dutch text)

Read More

Talk by Tom Williams (Colorado School of Mines), Monday 9/10/2023, 15:00

Oct 2, 2023

On Monday 9 October 2023 at 15:00, Tom Williams (Colorado School of Mines) will talk on Powerplay :Dismantling the White Patriarchal origins of robotics.

Read More

PhD Position - Bio-inspired research on seahorse tails

Sep 22, 2023

We are seeking a passionate PhD candidate to explore bio-inspired research, focusing on seahorse tails and its application potentials in robotics.

Read More

PhD position - AI-models for Computer analysis of Sign language communication

Jun 20, 2023

We have a vacancy for a PhD student to work on sign language technologies.

Read More

PhD Position - Research on an AI Buddy for Instructional Feedback

Jun 11, 2023

We offer a fully funded PhD Scholarship for Research on an AI Buddy for Instructional Feedback.

Read More

We won the ICRA 2023 cloth folding competition

Jun 1, 2023

In May, we won the cloth folding competition at ICRA 2023. We were the only team who completed all three tasks of the competition.

Read More

Robotic folding at imec ITF 2023

May 17, 2023

World ITF World is a conference that brings 2000 technology experts together. We were present with our work on robotic manipulation of challenging objects.

Read More

ESANN 2023 special session - Machine Learning Applied to Sign Language

Jan 16, 2023

A special session on “Machine Learning Applied to Sign Language” will be held at the 31st European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning (ESANN 2023). This session is co-organized by IDLab-AIRO.

Read More

Winning the IROS 2022 Cloth Folding Competition

Nov 1, 2022

In October we participated in, and won, the folding task of the first-ever edition of the Robotic Cloth Manipulation competition!

Read More

HRI Winter school on Embodied AI, 5-7 December 2022

Oct 25, 2022

HRI Winter school on Embodied AI: three days of interdisciplinary talks, workshops and tutorials on HRI.

Read More

PhD defence of Tom Neutens

Sep 9, 2022

Recently, Computer Science has become part of the Flemish compulsory education. In his Phd, Tom contributed to the integration of Computer Science in education by comparing teaching strategies, formulating guidelines for assessment, and developing digital tools tailored to the current needs in schools.

Read More

Summer school Ghent

Aug 23, 2022

The Ghent University Summer School, an event co-organised by IDLAB-AIRO, was once again an immense success. In total, 160 children visited our campus to partake in STEM-field related activities.

Read More

PhD position - Overcoming the data limitation in sign language translation

Jun 21, 2022

We offer a fully funded PhD Scholarship on Sign Language Recognition with Deep Learning.

Read More

PhD defence of Andreas Verleysen

May 23, 2022

Do we need to do the laundry? Or can robots help us with this task? Teaching robots to do the laundry is what Andreas Verleysen explored in his PhD which he defended today!

Read More

Two PhD studentships on social robots, consciousness and value-aware AI

May 20, 2022

The AIRO group (Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, airo.ugent.be) of IDLab-imec (idlab.technology) at Ghent University are excited to be offering two fully-funded PhD studentships to help with our research on social robotics under the supervision of Tony Belpaeme.

Read More

Value-Aware AI

May 19, 2022

AIRO is joining the VALAWAI project (short for Value-Aware AI) which we look into how consciousness and AI. Specifically, the project will look at how AI can become aware of the value of its decisions. How can an AI system know what is right and wrong? How can we give AI a moral compass?

Read More

HRI2022 meet-up - Human-Robot Interaction in Barcelona

Mar 10, 2022

As the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction 2022, or HRI2022 for short, was forced to move from an in-person conference to a virtual only conference, we decided to offer an opportunity for the HRI community to physically meet in Barcelona on Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 March 2022.

Read More

PlantComp - Workshop on plant sensing and computing

Feb 11, 2022

We are happy to announce the 2nd workshop on plant sensing and computing: PlantComp! In October 2022, PlantComp will bring together young researchers in plant physiology, sensing and modelling.

Read More

PhD defence of Olivier Pieters

Feb 8, 2022

Can plants compute? How can we quantify the computational power of plants? That is what Olivier Pieters explored in his PhD which he defended today!

Read More

The AIRO family is growing

Sep 23, 2021

The AIRO team looking very vibrant, happy and healthy. As of September 2021 we are a 30-strong team, with ten new people joining us to work on Human-Robot Interaction, robotic manipulation, unconventional computing, machine learning and sign language understanding.

Read More

PhD defence of Gabriel Urbain

Sep 15, 2021

In the future, can robots move as smoothly as animals? That is what Gabriel Urbain is investigating in his PhD which he defended today!

Read More

Summer school for children of Ghent

Aug 24, 2021

The summer school “zomerwijs” is organised for children from various cultural backgrounds in Ghent. 150 chidren visited a two-day science and technology event on our campus that was co-organised by IDLAB-AIRO.

Read More

PhD Vacancy on Social Robotics

Aug 17, 2021


Read More

AI At School wins M-Award

Dec 27, 2020

In 2020 the Flemish Knowledge Center for digital and media literacy awarded several projects for the fifth time in a row. In the category Media Literacy Educative project ‘AI At School’ wins the M-Award.

Read More

Agoria Public Award won by Rembrandt Perneel

Dec 15, 2020

With his master thesis on the design and modelling of a modular robotic system to improve weed management, Rembrandt Perneel has won the Agoria Public Award 2020.

Read More

PhD vacancy – Biologically inspired feature learning in neural networks

Dec 13, 2020

We are looking for a PhD student to study the mechanisms of information transfer and feature learning in biological neural networks.

Read More

PhD Vacancy on Paradigms for POST-digital computing Deep Learning

Dec 13, 2020

We are looking for a PhD student to study the mechanisms of information transfer and feature learning in biological neural networks.

Read More

PhD Vacancy on Sign Language Translation with Deep Learning

Nov 16, 2020

We offer a fully funded PhD Scholarship on Sign Language Translation with Deep Learning.

Read More

Queen Paola Award for Education won by the KIKS Project

Oct 25, 2020

KIKS, a STEM project on climate change, biology and artificial intelligence (AI), won the Queen Paola Award for Education. KIKS was developed in a unique collaboration between the Sint-Bavohumaniora, UGent, the Botanic Garden Meise, and Dwengo vzw. KIKS is part of an umbrella project ‘AI At School’ in which the basic concepts of artificial intelligence are applied from a social context.

Read More