SOPRANO Open Call for new robotics demonstrators
SOPRANO Open Call for new robotics demonstrators
Manufacturing, construction, and agriculture are major driving forces for the European economy and prosperity. Maintaining its competitiveness in these sectors demands highly efficient and flexible processes, and this can be achieved through digitization. Novel intelligent robotic capabilities that can be deployed side-by-side with humans and can operate and adapt to dynamic environments can accelerate this process. However, existing robotic systems cannot fit well into such settings as they are not versatile and flexible enough to automate certain tasks, cannot collaborate safely with humans in open and dynamic environments, nor are they easily and economically adaptable to process changes. The SOPRANO project coalesces multidisciplinary research and innovation in human-robot collaboration and intelligent multi-agent systems, aspiring to design the next generation of manufacturing floors, construction sites, and agri-food production, where humans and intelligent machines will seamlessly work together. It proposes to scale collaboration from the single human-agent dyad to a peer-based synergy between multiple interconnected robotic systems featuring different physical and cognitive properties, supporting various tasks in collaboration with human workers, robotics and other agents. SOPRANO will validate the technological offering in three novel and open-access use cases addressing both large-scale industries and small to medium enterprises, adding value to EU key sectors and instrumenting community building surrounding the open-source technologies in the EU industrial ecosystem. During the project, we will also enable external SMEs and start-ups to benefit from the project technologies via an open call, which will enable the building of demonstrators using SOPRANO technologies that will open new market opportunities for their products and services.
Entité de financement
Commission Européenne - Horizon EuropeClôture de l'appel
14 mai 2025Zone géographique
eur
Objectif
In this Open Call, SOPRANO will aim at:
▪ Recruiting SMEs/startups to exploit the SOPRANO technologies to develop new demonstrators or enhance an existing demonstrator supporting MH-MR scenarios in industrial settings, thus validating the project technologies in industrial sectors beyond those directly addressed by the consortium partners.
▪ Engaging new use cases from different industrial sectors to test and validate the SOPRANO technologies through specific integration paths, to collect a broader set of industrial requirements for the project technologies that ensures their wide applicability to European robotic solution developers, and to further quantify the added value and benefits both for businesses and humans involved in the supported MH-MR interactions.
▪ Boosting the SOPRANO technologies’ dissemination and exploitation.
The implementation of the demonstrator must be an industry relevant prototype of a robotics solution, which is created using the project technologies and addresses the chosen MH-MR application scenario. The demonstrator might consist of existing technologies and systems of the SME(s)/startup(s) and the SOPRANO technologies to a varying ratio. It should support the transition from research to product development and should demonstrate the SOPRANO technology’s potential for commercial use.
SOPRANO is aiming at supporting demonstrator projects in a diverse set of industrial sectors in order to enable testing and validation of the SOPRANO technologies in different SOPRANO environments and to ensure the components’ wide applicability to European robotic solution developers in various economic sectors.
To that end, Stage 2 ranking may give preference to proposals from the following sectors : Electronics ; Logistics ; Healthcare ; Packaging ; Metal/Machining ; Plastic/moulding.
Critères d'éligibilité
SOPRANO will fund third-party projects submitted by:
▪ Single applicants (must be robotics SMEs or startups)
▪ Consortiums of 2 or 3 entities, all of which must be robotics SMEs or startups.
All entities (whether single applicants or part of a consortium) must be:
▪ Innovative SME/Startup robotics technologies/services company
▪ A SME according to the EU definition (see Section 4.4.3 SME Eligibility and Startup Eligibility)
▪ An entity from an eligible country (see Section 4.4.5 Eligible Countries)
▪ An entity that is able to prove their financial stability and capacity
▪ An entity that is established at least one year before the submission of the application.
The applicants will typically be one of the following types of actors:
▪ Robotic Equipment Vendors
▪ Robotic Systems Developers
▪ Robotics Systems Integrators
▪ Industrial Robotic Application Providers
Technologies clés
AI-driven, Digital Twins, model-based robotics.
At least one of the SOPRANO components below should be integrated and used in the demonstrator proposal :
SC01 Visual Spatial Mapping [VLM]
SC02 Object Perception [OBP]
SC03 Non-Visual Localization [NVL]
SC04 Human Monitoring [HMO]
SC05 Mapping of High-level Plan to Robotic Capabilities [MRC]
SC06 MH-MR Task Allocation [CTA]
SC07 Safety Tools [DSA & RSA]
SC08 Scalable Simulation-Based Testing [SBT]
SC09 Human - Digital Twin [HDT]
SC11 AI Trustworthiness [AIT]
SC12 Context Extraction Module [CEM]
SC13 MH-MR Architecting Tools [MAT]
SC14 MLOps Orchestrator [MLO]
SC15 AI Model Optimizer [AIO]
SC16 Robotic Capabilities Implementation [RCI]
SC17 Advanced Visualizations [AVT]
Typologie de consortium
The maximum budget per application is 200,000 EUR.
The financial support to SMEs will cover only 70% of the project budget (i.e. the maximum grant is 140,000 EUR). SMEs are expected to co-finance 30% of the project budget.
The financial support for startups is 100% of the project budget and no co-financing is expected.
The projects should last up to 16 months and reach at least the demonstration of the developed solution in an operational environment (TRL7).
The created software can be provided either as open-source code, or as proprietary code.