The ECHORD++ team says thank you for 2017!

Dear friends and fellows of ECHORD++,

2017 has been another successful year for ECHORD++ – and we are entering the final year of the project. What has happened in the past 12 months? Let’s have a short review of this year:

Experiments

With pride we can look back at some of the experiments of the first call who started as a research project three years ago and in the meantime have developed marketable products.  They successfully followed our motto: bringing robot technology “From Lab to Market”.  In retrospective, we can confirm that it was money well spent by the European Commission which is now bringing value back to the European people. And we want to continue this way: this year we have had 16 experiments of the second call running (ending in 2018) and we want to support them to achieve successful and marketable products, as many experiments of the first call have. To continue this path of success we decided to offer an additional Booster Programme focusing on business development. All 31 experiments from call1 and call2 had the chance to apply for the Booster Programme, four were selected and will benefit from this opportunity, starting in February 2018.

RIFs

Our Robotic Innovation Facilities (RIFs) in Paris, Bristol and Pisa have regularly been receiving new requests from users who want to explore their ideas and discover solutions with the support of our ECHORD++ experts. In September, the RIF in Pisa-Peccioli hosted a small delegation of international science, technology and business journalists for a day-long programme that included an exclusive guided tour through the ECHORD++ Robotics Innovation Facility (RIF) in Peccioli (Pisa) and the external facilities at the Floriddia Biofarm in Pontedera. The media tour was planned in conjunction with the International Festival of Robotics which took place in Pisa from September 7th to 13th, with a series of events and exhibitions in more than 11 locations throughout Pisa.

PDTI

2017 was the start of the Prototyping Phase for the remaining PDTI consortia. The two Urban Robotics consortia for “Sewer Inspection”, who qualified for this second phase were ARSI and SIAR.  They underwent their on-site evaluations in the challenging sewer network of the city of Barcelona. For the Healthcare Challenge “Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment” it was ASSESTRONIC and CLARC who qualified for the prototyping phase. Consortia from both challenges showcased their latest developments at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona and our PDTI experts shared their pioneering methodology with the public at the Smart Regions with Smart Robots Conference in Brussels. The overall ECHORD++ methodology was also a topic at the central event of the ERW in Brussels and at the “Hubs, Platforms and Pilots in Horizon 2020: for clusters, companies, researchers” – workshop, organized by the Industrial Development Corporation of Norway (SIVA) and the Research Council of Norway, just to mention some of them.

The PDTI approach was very well received by other cities and regions who wanted to learn more about Public end-user Driven Innovations. We prepared a video explaining the PDTI methodology, watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=8TKUFjDh0tQ

TETRAMAX

As a last point we would like to announce a very interesting call for “Technology Transfer Experiments (TTX)” by the project TETRAMAX where you are invited to apply for up to 50k Euros of funding by February 28, 2018. The ambition of the TETRAMAX project is to support digitization of European SMEs and other industries in the domain of customized and low-energy computing for cyber physical systems and the internet of things. TETRAMAX is anchored in the European Commission´s “Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE)” Initiative, which unites several large-scale projects with similar goals in different application and technology domains.

For more details on the open call please visit: https://www.tetramax.eu/ttx/calls/

 

We would like to thank you for your support in 2017, send you our warmest thoughts and best wishes for a wonderful holiday season and a very happy and successful final spurt of ECHORD++.