INESC TEC won innovation and best master’s thesis awards in Robotics at international conference

The Institute received two awards during the 25^th edition of the IEEE International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions (ICARSC2025), consolidating the prominent position in the international robotics ecosystem. During the ICARSC2025 – considered one of the leading international scientific conferences in the field of autonomous robotics and competitions – the Portuguese Robotics Society (SRC) honoured the Institute with the Innovation and Technology Transfer Award in Robotics, plus the award for Best Master’s Thesis.

The Innovation and Technology Transfer Award in Robotics stems from the success of the Moma-Flex project. Developed within the scope of the EIT Manufacturing programme, and with an international consortium featuring INESC TEC, LinQ, CEIT, Worten, Sonae and Bonflioli, Moma-Flex aimed to create flexible mobile handlers capable of adapting to multiple operational requirements in the industrial intralogistics sector. The project included a smart solution that allowed collaborative robots to make real-time decisions in factories, significantly contributing to the automation of logistics processes. Recently, INESC TEC demonstrated two successful use cases at Worten’s warehouse in Azambuja: the “collection of distribution orders” and the “calculation and organisation of received products”. INESC TEC researchers João Pedro Souza, Luís Rocha, Artur Cordeiro, Sérgio Marinho, Héber Sobreira and Paulo Rebelo were responsible for the development of the award-winning case studies.

The second recognition was the Best Master’s Thesis Award, granted to INESC TEC researcher Pedro Afonso Dias – for his work Path Planning for a robotic manipulator in constrained workspaces.

The award-winning work developed a trajectory planning method for robotic manipulators, capable of operating in environments with spatial constraints and obstacles. The solution demonstrated promising performance in the practical tests carried out with a manipulator, standing out in terms of efficiency and applicability in real industrial scenarios.

These acknowledgements reaffirm the institution’s commitment to innovation and excellence in the development of advanced robotic solutions, contributing to technological and scientific progress in industrial robotics and intelligent systems.

ICARSC is a major international scientific conference in Mobile Robotics, financially sponsored by the Portuguese Robotics Society, IEEE Portugal Section, IEEE Portugal RAS Chapter, and with technical support from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) and IEEE Education Society Portugal Chapter.