The European Robotics League (ERL) held its final at the pier in The Hague, bringing together competing teams, industry partners, city representatives, and sponsors for a week of applied robotics challenges across real-world scenarios. Despite characteristically changeable coastal weather, the event concluded with a full awards ceremony and the message: robotics is moving decisively from the laboratory into everyday environments.
Saman Mohammadi, CEO of RE BORN Real Estate, which owns the pier and sponsored the event, addressed attendees with an outline of his company’s strategic direction. RE BORN develops, constructs, and operates buildings across Amsterdam and the wider Netherlands, and Mohammadi described the company as already operating as an AI-first organisation, with six in-house programmers developing AI agents for use across development, construction, and maintenance processes.
The pier itself is set to become a flagship project. Mohammadi announced that reconstruction will begin next year, spanning a three-year programme, with the goal of creating what he described as the first fully robotic building in the world. Planned applications include humanoid robots in hospitality and customer service roles, autonomous drone delivery of food and beverages, robotic bar operations, and an urban air mobility platform. A central feature will be a large-format stage capable of reconfiguring its layout within minutes, from concert venue to dining space to dance floor, through robotics and computer-controlled systems.
RE BORN is also relocating an approximately 8,000 square metre building from Amsterdam to the pier site, a project Mohammadi positioned as one of the most ambitious circular construction projects undertaken to date. All new buildings in the company’s portfolio are being designed as modular and functionally adaptable, with the longer-term ambition of structures that can change use near-instantaneously as technology allows.
Societal Value
Saskia Bruines, Deputy Mayor of The Hague, addressed the closing ceremony and reflected on the week’s demonstrations across the city’s coastal and urban environments. She highlighted two areas where she sees particular near-term value: environmental monitoring and emergency medical response.
“We have seen that robotics can make a real difference, helping to protect nature by detecting threats early and leaving areas as undisturbed as possible,” she said. On the medical side, she pointed to the speed advantage drones offer over conventional emergency response: “A drone can reach a location faster than any human, and that speed can save lives.”
Bruines emphasised that the city views robotics not as an end in itself but as a means of addressing concrete societal challenges. She commended the competing teams for their performance under difficult real-world conditions and noted that innovation in this field requires exactly the cycle of testing, failure, and improvement that the ERL format is designed to produce.
European Robotics Community
Reinhard Lafrenz, Secretary General of euRobotics, brought a long-term perspective to the proceedings. Having organised his first robotics competition in 1999, Lafrenz pointed to the sustained value of competition-based networks in building the European robotics community.
“Many people who are involved in unique robotics activities stem from the old robot competitions and networks,” he said. “This is the spirit we should maintain.” He acknowledged the particular difficulty of the ERL format, which requires teams to operate outside controlled laboratory conditions in unpredictable environments, and noted that this is precisely what gives the competition its relevance to real-world deployment.
The ERL final was structured around five applied scenario episodes:
Episode 1 – Inspection and Maintenance.
Episode 2 – Coastal Protection and Nature Preservation.
Episode 3 – Emergency Response and Public Health.
Episode 4 – Hospitality and Service.
Episode 5 – Clever Waste Management.
