When intelligence is distributed across many parts, be they robots, devices, or objects, it can be tricky for the bigger picture to emerge. Yet answering these questions is key to making collective systems that are easy to design, monitor and control.

EMERGE will deliver a new philosophical, mathematical, and technological framework to demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, how a collaborative awareness – a representation of shared existence, environment and goals – can arise from the interactions of elemental artificial entities.

In this effort, we will rely only on unstructured conditions that the real world demands without leveraging a pre-existing shared language between them. Our goal is to surpass the limitations and barriers of the current state-of-the-art distributed systems to produce breakthroughs and open new markets in the next generation of robotic systems.

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Latest News

Publication: DRESS: Distributed Robotic Enhanced Soft System for Non-Uniform Object Transportation

Publication: DRESS: Distributed Robotic Enhanced Soft System for Non-Uniform Object Transportation

Calendar22 May 2026

In this paper, EMERGE partners from the University of Bristol propose combining the advantages of soft and swarm robotics inside a unified system.

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Publication: End-to-End Learning of Soft-Robot Dynamics from Event-Based Camera Streams

Publication: End-to-End Learning of Soft-Robot Dynamics from Event-Based Camera Streams

Calendar22 May 2026

In this study, EMERGE partners from the Delft University of Technology turn to event-based cameras, which provide asynchronous, high-frequency visual information better suited to capturing dynamic deformations.

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Publication: Standard vs. Modular Sampling: Best Practices for Reliable LLM Unlearning

Publication: Standard vs. Modular Sampling: Best Practices for Reliable LLM Unlearning

Calendar01 April 2026

In this study, EMERGE partners from the University of Pisa systematically evaluate the efficacy and stability of the de facto standards of conventional LLM Unlearning.

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Partners

The EMERGE consortium brings together the University of Pisa (Italy), Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Germany), Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), University of Bristol (United Kingdom), and Da Vinci Labs (France).

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