Project name: EMERGE
Total Budget: €2 839 511
EU Contribution: €2 839 511
Location: Italy
EMERGE will deliver a new philosophical, mathematical, and technological framework to demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, how a collaborative awareness – a representation of shared existence, environment and goals – can arise from the interactions of elemental artificial entities. Collaborative awareness will transform robotics and all kinds of applications involving a collective of entities such as IoT devices, AI agents, smart services, biomedical nanodevices.
Vision & ImpactEMERGE rethinks how multi-agent systems are designed by enabling collaboration with minimal assumptions about shared communication. From bacteria to robots, complex behaviours emerge from simple agents, providing a physics-based foundation for sustainable, neuromorphic and morphological AI.
CollaborationEMERGE shaped its research plan in synergy with other EIC portfolio projects, leading to joint events and publications that offer an integrated view of how aware technologies impact multiple ICT domains. EIC business acceleration services and booster grants also supported the creation of three startups in soft robotics, swarm robotics and AI.
What's next ?EMERGE expands toward impact and demonstration. An art–science installation, premiered at the Venice Biennale, brings collective intelligence to the public and will feature at the EIC Summit 2026. In parallel, EMERGE advances compelling robotics applications, from soft robots with enhanced dexterity to emergent swarms and cobots.
EMERGE is an EIC Pathfinder project laying the foundations for engineering aware collectives of intelligent embodied and virtual agents, where even simple entities can form representations of each other, their environment and shared goals. Starting from agents with no common language and limited capabilities, EMERGE shows how collaborative awareness can generate high-complexity cooperative behaviours.
The project is fully interdisciplinary, integrating philosophy, ethics, mathematics, AI, engineering and robotics. EMERGE is part of the eight-project EIC portfolio ‘Awareness Inside’, developing resilient, self-evolving and human-centric technologies. EIC support strengthened collaborations, joint events and publications, and enabled three spin-offs through the Tech to Market programme.
EMERGE's Timeline
- September 2025
EMERGE and VALAWAI organise the workshop “Awareness in Artificial Agents” during the Biennale in Venice, Italy
- July 2025
EMERGE partners from TUDelft lauch the spin-off Embodied AI rooted on project results in soft robot design, nonlinear modeling, control theory, and human-robot interaction - (Embodied AI on LinkedIn)
- May 2025
EMERGE is approved for additional funding under the EIC Booster Grant for supporting Innovation and Portfolio actions
- Semptember 2024
EMERGE partners from UNIPI launch the spin-off ContinualIST based on project results on lifelong learning and efficient neural networks for timeseries - (ContinualIST on LinkedIn)
- June 2023
- October 2022