The METRICS project organises challenge-led robotics competitions in the four priority areas identified in the topic ICT-09-2019-2020: Healthcare, Inspection and Maintenance, Agri-Food, and Agile Production. METRICS is designed to organise competitions as reproducible and objective evaluation campaigns and aims to structure in a sustainable way the European robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) community around the four priority areas.

In order to assess the reliability of the different competing robots in a rigorous and unbiased way, METRICS has developed an evaluation framework based on metrological principles. For each competition, METRICS organises field evaluation campaigns (in physical environments) and cascade evaluation campaigns (on datasets) to engage with the AI community. The competitions are designed to draw attention from the entire economic sector, the academia and Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) in Europe, while stimulating public engagement. Indeed, METRICS has implemented a dedicated strategy to mobilize external partners and sponsors to support the organization of the competitions or ensure their industrial relevance. A specific outreach strategy has been developed to promote robotics systems towards the general public and ensure the compliance of robots with ethical and socio-economic principles.

METRICS brings together 17 partners, all expert in robotics competition and metrology, with highly complementary testing facilities and networks in the four PAs. This experienced consortium ensures that METRICS benefits from the feedback of past and current competitions and projects and is highly complementary with European initiatives and networks (e.g. DIH). Thus, METRICS will contribute to structuring a sustainable network of European robotics stakeholders in the four PAs through the organisation of industry-relevant competitions based on robust evaluations methods.