One participant is Katja Mombaur, a mathematician at the University of Heidelberg. She and her team are developing algorithms that will one day help scientists build robots that can maintain their balance, even on unfamiliar or uneven terrain. Then robots could also be used to provide aid in the event of a disaster such as the Fukushima catastrophe, where a robot might have been able to carry out repairs that are far too dangerous for humans to undertake. Report by Mabel Gundlach