Cyber & Security Hub

To strengthen the competitiveness of the EU industry, there is an increasing need for flexible production, exploiting the capabilities of both the machinery and human workforce. The growing market of robots has reacted, adapting to the changing situation by providing collaborative robotic solutions with a variety of characteristics in terms of payload, type and mobility. A number of technological solutions for perception and safety allow their coexistence with humans. While several research activities have been conducted over the past 5 years on this topic, wider industrial adoption is lagging due to the following restrictions:
• Limited cognition and intelligence
• Low performance of collaborative operations
• Collaboration fluidity is rather low as the operators have to adapt to the particularities of the robots.
• Complexity in robot programming which requires the involvement of skilled engineers, does not provide flexibility in the execution phase, and does not benefit from the tacit knowledge of experienced operators.

Thus, despite the fact the mechatronics are quite advanced, a perfect matching of mechanics and control is required to create robots that advance from repetitive and precision-oriented tasks to becoming intelligent and helpful co-workers. Proper human robot interaction is the most important ground to be covered.

Thus, JARVIS aims to develop a reusable set of tools that enable AI driven multimodal means of interaction: a) involving interfaces for physical and remote information exchange, robot control and programming, b) providing social skills to a variety of robots to achieve seamless user-centric interaction that extends human ability for complex tasks and c) demonstrating scalability of application and ability to achieve economies at scale.

DEADLINE : 5 May 2025

HUB : Cyber & Security

The EU Defence Innovation Scheme (EUDIS) is an instrument enabled by the European Defence Fund (EDF) to strengthen defence innovation in the European Union. EUDIS offers a set of instruments for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), including start-ups, and other non-traditional players in defence industrial ecosystem to ensure more opportunities to access the European Defence Fund.
It aims to lower entry barriers into the defence domain for smaller players and innovators, focusing on technological readiness and market maturity. EUDIS is here to support innovators throughout the development cycle to mature, scale-up, demonstrate their use-case, grow and successfully enter the market.

DEADLINE : 27 April 2025

HUB : Advanced Engineering & Computing

AUTOASSESS aims to find solutions to ensure the structural safety of ships, oil and gas and other marine infrastructures. Currently, this task is done by human surveyors who must climb into confined areas such as ballast tanks, or cargo holds which represent extremely dangerous GNSS-denied environments.
The inspection is a physically demanding task, done in tight enclosed spaces, difficult to access, with low/no light, slippery surfaces and with low/no oxygen and toxic gases. According to the International Marine Organization (IMO) one person is killed on average every week from accidents in such enclosed spaces. Further, during the inspection process the ship cannot operate, posing high pressure on surveyors to work quickly.
In summary, the overall goal of AUTOASSESS is to remove human surveyors and workers from dangerous and dirty confined areas of offshore structures by employing an autonomous robotic system that exceeds human capabilities and is able to perform maritime vessel classifications.
To address this goal, AUTOASSESS aims to employ a robot and remove human surveyors out of harm’s way, while at the same time obtaining an accurate, repeatable, and quick vessel inspection.

DEADLINE : 24 April 2025

HUB : Cyber & Security