European Network on Agentic Physical AI: New COST Action Accepted, Chaired by ZHAW CAI
A new COST Action to build a European network around Agentic Physical AI has been approved. The ZHAW Centre for Artificial Intelligence (CAI) will chair the four-year network, while the University of Liverpool leads the proposal and administrative coordination.
A new COST Action dedicated to building a pan-European network around Agentic Physical AI has been officially accepted, a significant recognition for the ZHAW Centre for Artificial Intelligence (CAI) which will chair the new network (API-Net).
COST Actions are European funding instruments that connect researchers and innovators across countries to coordinate around an emerging topic. This Action brings together universities, research institutes, universities of applied sciences, startups, and large companies from eight European countries to shape the foundations of Agentic Physical AI: the field where artificial intelligence, robotics, and cognitive science meet to create AI agents that can perceive, reason, and act in the physical world.
The network will be chaired from the CAI by Dr. Jorge Peña Queralta, Head of the Embodied Mobile Agents research group, together with Dr. Giovanni Toffetti from the Institute of Computer Science (InIT). The proposal is led by the University of Liverpool, which handles the administrative coordination of the Action.
Over its four-year duration, the Action will work towards a shared vocabulary and taxonomy for the field, common technical standards and interoperability, training and exchange opportunities for early-career researchers, stronger collaboration between industry and academia, and evidence-based input to European policy and ethics around trustworthy physical AI. The work is organized into four thematic working groups covering conceptual foundations, technological embodiment, ethics and trust, and education and outreach.
For the CAI, chairing this network is both a recognition of its leadership in Physical AI and an opportunity to help set Europe’s agenda in one of the most dynamic areas of artificial intelligence.