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.
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]
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.
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
