Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg

Their core work

Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (BRSU) is a German university of applied sciences with a strong robotics research group focused on autonomous mobile robots, logistics automation, and robot performance evaluation. They build and test robotic systems for real-world environments — from ultra-flat transport pods for warehouse logistics to multi-robot safety architectures. Beyond system development, they play a recognized role in defining how robots are benchmarked and evaluated through international competitions, contributing to metrology standards for robotics across healthcare, manufacturing, and agri-food domains.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

BRSU's early H2020 work (2015-2018) centered on core robotics system development and European robotics coordination, alongside a one-off contribution to border security inspection. From 2018 onward, their focus shifted decisively toward robot performance evaluation, standardized benchmarking through competitions, and the safety/security dimensions of multi-robot deployments. The trend shows a move from building robots to defining how robots are measured, qualified, and made safe — positioning them as evaluators and standard-setters, not just developers.

BRSU is moving from robot development toward robot qualification, safety assurance, and performance metrology — expect them to be key partners in projects requiring trusted evaluation of autonomous systems.

How they like to work

BRSU operates primarily as an active partner (5 of 6 projects), with one coordination role in ROPOD where they led the robotics logistics effort. With 66 unique partners across 20 countries, they maintain a broad European network rather than clustering around a few repeat collaborators. This pattern suggests a reliable, well-connected partner that integrates smoothly into diverse consortia — useful for coordinators who need a strong robotics contributor without territorial friction.

BRSU has collaborated with 66 distinct partners across 20 countries, indicating a well-distributed European network built through the robotics research community. Their connections span both academic and industrial partners typical of robotics and smart systems consortia.

What sets them apart

Unlike large German technical universities (TU Munich, KIT) that cover robotics as one of many disciplines, BRSU concentrates its H2020 portfolio almost entirely on applied robotics — giving them focused depth rather than breadth. Their dual strength in both building robotic systems and formally evaluating them through competitions and metrology is uncommon; most partners do one or the other. For consortium builders, this means BRSU can contribute both the technical development work package and the evaluation/benchmarking work package in the same project.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ROPOD
  Their only coordinated project and largest budget (EUR 826K), developing ultra-flat robotic pods for logistics — demonstrates leadership capacity in applied robotics.
• METRICS
  Spans five application domains (healthcare, agile production, inspection, agri-food, metrology) — shows their cross-sector evaluation capability beyond just building robots.
• SESAME
  Most recent project (2021-2023) focusing on safety-security co-engineering for multi-robot systems — signals their forward direction into trustworthy autonomous systems.