The GDR, an open national Research Group in Robotics established by the CNRS has been officially launched in March 2007. The GDR objective concerns the enhancement of the synergy between national laboratories and the fostering of the dynamics of the field. It comprises about 45 teams from CNRS, Universities, INRIA, and associated R&D Institutions (CEA, ONERA, CEMAGREF…), which represent up to 1500 researchers, including post-doc and PhD students.

The GDR covers 4 generic research topics:
• sensory motor control, perception, action and movement,
• cognition, decision, autonomy, learning,
• interaction and cooperation,
• robotics system design.

It is organized in 9 working groups (WG):
• Medical Robotics,
• Autonomous Vehicles (land, air, sea),
• Multi Scale Manipulation,
• Robotic Methodologies,
• Human-Robotic Systems Interaction,
• Innovative Design and Mechatronics,
• Humanoids
• Learning, Neurosciences
• Robotic engineers network in mechatroncis and control architecture.  

Each WG is run by 1 up to 3 people. The objectives of a WG is to organize scientific meetings focusing on relevant issues in its field of interest; to foster cooperation within the group, and with WG’s of other GDR of the IC community (for instance, GDR ISIS in Imaging, MACS in Control Engineering, STIC-Santé in Health…); to contribute to, and update, the comprehensive state of the art that has been done prior to the creation of the GDR. Since the launching of the GDR, up to 30 scientific 1-day meetings have been organized, bringing together about 20 people in the mean at each meeting. For most of them, a limited number of formal presentations (typically 4 or 5) has been done, which made it possible to have profitable scientific discussion and exchange of expertise between the attendees of the meeting.

Another objective of the GDR is to promote involvement of industrial partners, and to foster collaborative research-industry applications to national and European programs. A club of industrial partners has been created (two dozen of motivated small- and large-sized companies have joined the club so far). The club of partners is working on a road map in order to better formalize their strategy, should the partners be providers of equipments or end-users of robot technologies. The club has also prepared a collaborative proposal for a national call of the French Research National Agency (ANR). The goal is to create a platform that would facilitate transfer of knowledge from the academic world toward the industrial one, and technical or scientific challenges from the industrial world toward the academic one.