At Europe’s flagship forum on artificial intelligence, data and robotics, NSBproject is welcoming visitors to the booth of the Horizon Europe project TORNADO. Its mission there is twofold: to tell the story of the research, and to help it turn into real-world impact.
Porto, 13 October 2026. The AI, Data and Robotics Forum 2026 (ADRF26), organised by ADRA and INESC TEC, opened today at the Alfândega do Porto. Among the stands in the exhibition area is TORNADO, the project developing robots that can handle small, soft and deformable objects and work alongside people in hospitals and factories.
The booth is hosted by NSBproject, represented by Simona Aceto and Michele Ferramola. Over two days they are introducing the project, its use cases and its ongoing work to researchers, companies, investors and policymakers.
The voice of TORNADO
Within the consortium, NSBproject leads communication and dissemination. The job is to make highly technical results accessible: foundation models for robotics, manipulation of deformable objects, human-robot collaboration. Those results need to reach very different audiences, from the scientific community and industry to end-users such as hospitals and logistics centres, and European institutions.
At the booth, that work becomes a face-to-face conversation. Visitors can explore the three use cases being validated: a gears factory, a hospital and a plant distribution centre. They can also see how TORNADO’s robots interact through voice and gestures, learn new skills from augmented-reality demonstrations and keep adapting through feedback from the field.
From research to market, with C-Tech Navigator®
Communicating a result is only half the story. For it to have impact, someone has to be able to adopt it, build on it or fund it. That is why NSBproject works with TORNADO’s partners on the path from research results to market-ready solutions.
The tool behind this is C-Tech Navigator®, NSBproject’s proprietary strategic intelligence system. It combines artificial intelligence with:
- competitive analysis;
- patent and prior-art analysis;
- technology assessment;
- scale-up evaluation.
The output is technology roadmaps, scenarios and decision-support tools for companies, research centres and investors. For TORNADO, they help pinpoint where a technology can create the most value, what barriers stand in the way, and who is most likely to use it.
In Porto, the booth is also a meeting point for anyone looking for technologies to adopt, partners to develop them with, or opportunities to invest in.
Tomorrow’s workshop, and where to find us
On 14 October at 10:00, in the Arrábida Room, TORNADO leads the workshop “When Robots Learn to Interact”. Speakers are Marta Lagomarsino (IIT), Valerio Bo (UPC-IRI) and Néstor García Hidalgo (Eurecat). A design sprint follows, in which the audience builds validation pathways for robots that keep learning in hospitals and factories. The results will feed recommendations for European research, innovation and industrial uptake.
TORNADO booth | 13–14 October, Stand Exhibition, Alfândega do Porto |
Workshop | 14 October, 10:00–11:15, Arrábida Room |
Programme | |
Contact | Simona Aceto, s.aceto@nsbproject.com |
