Cyber & Security Hub

In the last three decades, public key cryptography has become an indispensable component of global communication digital infrastructure. These networks support a plethora of applications that are important to our economy, our security, and our way of life, such as mobile phones, internet commerce, social networks, and cloud computing. In such a connected world, the ability of individuals, businesses and governments to communicate securely is of the utmost importance. At the moment, the quantum threat is theoretical as quantum computers that fulfill the requirements of Shor’s and Grover’s algorithms for long keys are not available, but it is evident that widely used RSA, ECDSA, ECDH, and DSA cryptosystems will need to be replaced by post-quantum cryptography (PQC). The need for addressing this problem early enough has been recognized by various relevant organizations and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has started an effort to identify cryptographic algorithms able to withstand quantum computer attacks by 2022 — and make them available by 2024. The main objective of PQ-REACT project is to design, develop and validate a framework for a faster and smoother transition from classical to post-quantum cryptography for a wide variety of contexts and usage domains, while leveraging Europe’s most powerful Quantum infrastructure (IBM Quantum Computer from Fraunhofer FOKUS). This framework will include PQC migration paths and cryptographic agility methods and will develop a portfolio of tools for validation of post quantum cryptographic systems, that will allow users to switch to post-quantum cryptography, taking under consideration their individualities and various contexts and a wide variety of real world pilots, i.e. Smart Grids, 5G and Ledgers. The project will also foster a series of open calls for SMEs and other stakeholders to bring and test their PQC algorithms and external pilots on the PQ-REACT, Quantum Computing Infrastructure.

DEADLINE : 27 May 2025

HUB : Advanced Engineering & Computing

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