Description Fostering collaborative research through network activities Research in artificial cognitive systems currently suffers from fragmentation and the lack of a clear agenda. It is for this reason that EUCogII establishes a closely cooperating research community in Europe that develops its vision for the discipline. The project sets up a network of several hundred European researchers in the wider area of artificial cognitive systems, with an emphasis on participants in projects of FP7 ICT Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics, building on the achievements of the FP6 project euCognition.This EUCogII community will meet in about 30 events with over 1000 participants during the project duration and participate in web-based work throughout. In these network activities its members are invited to step back from their day-to-day research, talk to people other than the usual experts in their sub-field and consider the bigger picture. It is this bigger picture of aims and methods that is needed for coherent artificial cognitive systems research and funding, and that EUCogII helps to clarify by its coordination action.The activities are structured in four content work packages: (1) The network establishes and maps a basic image of what is the state of the art in the discipline, with an emphasis on the coherence of the whole (2) It formulates a set of specific medium and long-term challenges for cognitive systems; these challenges provide a direction for research and a measure of its success (3) The network contributes to the education of future researchers by the formulation of European aims for specific educational programmes in cognitive systems, by providing material for such programmes and by specific training events for its members. (4) The partners reach out to the members of the network and to the wider community in a variety of events where researchers meet regularly, such as the members' meetings, workshops, summer-schools and student/faculty exchanges.