On Monday 19 October, more than fifty executives and experts from the high-tech and manufacturing sectors, knowledge institutions, regional authorities and central government gathered at Nieuwspoort in The Hague for the first Strategic Working Session of the National Agenda for Cognitive Robotics (NACR). At the invitation of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy (EZK) and Holland High Tech, they provided feedback on the outline of the agenda and shared their ambitions for cognitive robotics in the Netherlands. The outcome: widespread recognition of the urgency, incisive insights into bottlenecks and areas for intervention, and a wealth of offers to help shape the agenda’s further development.
Tjerk Opmeer, Director of Innovation and Industrial Policy at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy (EZK), outlined the role of cognitive robotics in Dutch innovation and industrial policy. Cognitive robotics is one of the cross-cutting themes in the strategic market programme ‘High-tech Mechanical Engineering’ and an area of application in which several key technologies from the National Technology Strategy (NTS) converge.
Leo Warmerdam, Managing Director of Holland High Tech, and Ton Peijnenburg, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of VDL-ETG, speaking on behalf of the relevant working group, highlighted why there is an urgent need to focus on cognitive robotics: to address structural labour shortages and increase labour productivity, to safeguard the Dutch (high-tech and manufacturing) industry, and to strengthen the resilience of the Netherlands and Europe through technological control points in international value chains. Ronald van Es (programme manager at Holland High Tech) and Gerben Klein Lebbink (High Tech coordinator at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy) then explained the structure of the agenda.
The participants then set to work themselves in breakout sessions. The first session focused on the vision, objectives and KPIs. In the second session, the participants assessed the bottlenecks and interventions for each main agenda item, added to these and indicated where they themselves wished to contribute. The flipcharts were soon filled: bottlenecks and interventions were identified and expanded upon, sharp questions and suggestions were raised regarding the scope of technology and applications, and there was a call to set even greater ambitions. Just as valuable were the new connections that emerged – spanning regions, areas of application, organisations and the value chain.
The input from the working session is now being processed and feedback provided. Up to and including the first quarter of 2027, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy (EZK), Holland High Tech and the cognitive robotics working group – comprising, amongst others, VDL-ETG, Brainport Industries, TNO, NXP, FME, NL Robotics, Batenburg Beenen, ROM-Nederland, Brainport Development and the field labs and research groups – to further develop the framework into public-private programmes. This will be done with further input from experts, consultation sessions with the ecosystem and feedback rounds.
It is now expected that the National Agenda for Cognitive Robotics will be presented in the first quarter of 2027; in April 2027, cognitive robotics will take centre stage at Hannover Messe 2027.
Would you like to contribute ideas on how to develop this further or keep track of its progress? Visit the National Cognitive Robotics Agenda page.
