This 1st Open call for Upscaling projects aims to select up to 24 service/technology providers testing the components and developing edge solutions (executable apps and services) that will extend the functionalities of the 3 pilot sectors (energy, automotive and agrifood) chosen the consortium.
Activities funded will aim at:
● Testing components and developing edge solutions (executable apps and services) that will extend the functionalities of the O-CEI (Cloud-Edge-IoT) large-scale pilots, and
● Providing added value to any of the O-CEI pilots (in the form of a new model, data sharing, efficiency, better performance, new utility, increased coverage…).
Applicants must address one challenge within a specific domain from one of the 8 O-CEI Project pilots:
1. Electricity and heat pumps
2. Energy flexibility involving 5G telco operators
3. Electric vehicle fleet management and EV charging
4. Electromobility SDV and VaS
5. Logistic hub value chain efficiency via energy flexibility
6. Farm to fork dairy energy tracking
7. Sustainable yield and harvesting
8. Smart Energy City
More information on the challenges: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G5GDLw4YNNoMsEje-QRmP3Rgr1oNFhP9/view.
Solutions can be of the following types, considering containerization, scalability, interoperability aspects as well as open interfaces (where applicable and appropriate) in the proposed designs:
• New smart data and semantics components related to trust, aggregation, data spaces, access or any sovereignty realm feature that might enhance the realization of CEI use cases.
• New value-adding virtualized applications/platforms. Application service layer components should exploit functionalities or major standards related to the use cases. Energy flexibility-related applications or related enablers are encouraged.
• Customization and integration of externally owned products/systems that can provide added value to O-CEI use cases to deliver relevant functionalities.
• Advanced virtualisation mechanism for smart objects, including context-aware mechanisms and transfer of virtual objects between servers and cloud platforms.
• Decentralized identification software tools and mechanisms (such as Verifiable Credentials and Distributed Ledger Technology) in distributed energy flexibility environments.
• AI/ML models/services/flows working that enhance the scope of one project use-case. Here, contributions related to Generative AI, agentic AI, distributed frugal AI with xAI (close to the edge) will be particularly thought. They shall be built on top of well-established frameworks to ease their adoption.
• New smart networking components, which can be incorporated in distributed, large-scale topologies. Networking components should be based on different standards higher-level communication standards (e.g., OPC UA, TSN, 5G…) or proprietary networking solutions.
• New vertical-agnostic containerized functionalities (e.g., platforms, services, protocols) to smartly manage data transfers in presence of networking disconnections, disruptions, etc. and/or enhancing the efficiently make use of the available bandwidth (offloading, peers’ data sharing, OTA, etc.).
• Smart devices to complement project’s use-cases based on different low-level communication standards (e.g., ZigBee, 6LowPan, WIFI, Bluetooth, IEEE 802.15.4, NFC, CAN, etc.) or on ad-hoc proprietary device solutions.
• Synthetic data generators/simulators related with the use case technologies (considering GenAI or other technologies); or novel frameworks that enable their preparation (validated in one of the use cases).
• Human-machine interfaces and apps that could enable novel business models, enhancing the role of the users in the scope of the use cases.
• Cybersecurity tools to enhance/assess the pilots’ security (e.g., penetration testing).
• Open solutions fitting the pilots, combining or deciding among the previous or different ones.
Selected projects will receive up to EUR 100K and enter a 7-month Support programme covering 3 stages:
● Stage 1. Individual Mentoring Plan and Inception
● Stage 2. Development of CEI utilities
● Stage 3. Release and testing
Solutions developed are expected to reach TRL6-7 by the end of the programme.
Eligible applicants are individual SMEs, (including StartUps) located in EU Member States or Horizon Europe Associated countries.
Challenges 4.2.2 and 4.2.3 expect the development of open-source software based solutions.
