On Friday, 25 September 2026, the Europe House in Belgrade became one of the central meeting points for science, curiosity and discovery as part of the 17th European Researchers’ Night. This year’s event, held under the slogan “One Heart for Science,” brought researchers and the public together through interactive demonstrations, experiments, workshops and conversations designed to show that science is not confined to laboratories, but is closely connected with everyday life.

European Researchers’ Night 2026 featured more than 200 free activities, with programmes organised at numerous locations across Serbia. According to the organisers, more than 110,000 visitors took part in the activities held during the event. The Europe House in Belgrade hosted the official opening and a diverse programme covering topics ranging from history and biology to artificial intelligence, robotics and emerging technologies. Among the technologies presented to visitors was TIAGo, an intelligent mobile robot developed by PAL Robotics and widely used in research in robotics, artificial intelligence and automation. However, TIAGo had a somewhat different mission at European Researchers’ Night: to demonstrate how robots can become not only increasingly intelligent and autonomous, but also more resilient to cyberattacks. Equipped with advanced sensors, including cameras, LiDAR and other sensing systems, TIAGo is able to collect information about its surroundings and use it to navigate through space. Artificial-intelligence algorithms process this information to help the robot understand where it is, what is located around it and how it should move toward its destination.

Visitors had the opportunity to take a look inside the robot’s “digital brain” and discover how a mobile robot perceives the world around it. Instead of seeing robotics only as a finished technological product, they could explore the processes taking place behind the scenes — from collecting information through sensors to processing data, making decisions and generating commands that control the robot’s movement. A particularly important part of the demonstration was dedicated to robot cybersecurity.

Cyberattacks are commonly associated with stolen passwords, compromised accounts or data theft. However, as robots, vehicles, industrial machines and other physical systems become more connected and autonomous, cyberattacks can also influence their behaviour in the real world. For example, if an attacker were able to manipulate information coming from a robot’s camera, the robot could receive a distorted representation of its environment. As a result, it might incorrectly estimate its position, fail to recognise an obstacle or choose an inappropriate path. Similar problems could occur when incorrect sensor information is provided to autonomous vehicles or industrial control systems.

The presented research is part of the MCSecurity project, financially supported by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia and led by Prof. Dr. Živana Jakovljević. The project investigates new approaches to improving the cybersecurity of intelligent robotic and industrial control systems, with particular attention to detecting cyberattacks and enabling systems to respond safely when an attack occurs. The demonstration also had an important educational goal. Robotics, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity are developing extremely quickly, while robots are increasingly moving beyond research laboratories and factories into healthcare, transportation, education, services and everyday environments. For this reason, bringing these technologies closer to the general public — and especially to children and young people — is becoming increasingly important. Rather than presenting artificial intelligence and robotics as something distant or mysterious, TIAGo provided visitors with an opportunity to see that behind an intelligent robot are mathematics, programming, mechanical engineering, electronics, experimentation and, above all, curiosity.