NEMO aims to establish itself as the game changer of AIoT-Edge-Cloud Continuum by introducing an open source, flexible, adaptable, cybersecure and multi-technology meta-Operating System, sustainable during and after the end of the project, via the Eclipse foundation (NEMO consortium member). To achieve technology maturity and massive adoption, NEMO will not “reinvent the wheel”, but leverage and interface existing systems, technologies and Open Standards, and introduce novel concepts, tools, testing facilities/Living Labs and engagement campaigns to go beyond today’s state of the art, make breakthrough research and create sustainable innovation, already within the project lifetime. NEMO will introduce innovations at different layers of the protocol stack, enabling on-device Cybersecure Federated ML/DRL, deliver time-triggered (TSN) multipath ad-hoc/hybrid self-organized and zero-delay failback/self-healing multi-cloud clusters, multi-technology Secure Execution Environment and on-Service Level Objectives meta-Orchestrator, Plugin and Apps Lifecycle Management and Intent Based programming tools. Moreover, NEMO will be “by design” and “by innovation” cybersecure and trusted adopting state of the art mechanisms such as Mutual TLS and Digital Identity Attestation. NEMO will be validated in 5 most prominent industrial sectors (i.e. Farming, Energy, Mobility/City, Industry 4.0 and Media/XR) and 8 use cases in 5 +1 Living Labs, utilizing more than 30 heterogenous IoT devices and real 5G infrastructure. The impact will not only safeguard EU position in data economy and applications verticals, but lower energy efficiency, reduce pesticides and CO2 footprint. Beyond Eclipse adoption, NEMO sustainability, wide acceptance and SMEs engagement will be achieved via open source ecosystems, standardization initiatives and 2 Open Calls that will provide financial support of 1,8M€ and access to NEMO Living Labs to SMEs and enlarge NEMO by at least 16 new entities.

CLEVER proposes a series of innovations in the area of hardware accelerators, design stack, and middleware software that revolutionize the ability of edge computing platforms to operate federatedly, leveraging sparse resources that are coordinated to create a powerful swarm of resources. CLEVER technologies will support the deep edge computing paradigm, moving computing services closer to the end user or the source of the data to reduce power consumption, reduce capacity requirements, and latency for mission critical applications. Furthermore, CLEVER will overcome traditional limitations of edge computing in terms of limited resource availability by providing an effective framework for seamless use of federated resources in the edge-cloud continuum. CLEVER will demonstrate processing solutions for AI at the edge through four use cases: (1) digital twin for in-factory optimization, (2) smart agriculture for high yield eco-farms, (3) fully automated material deployment, and (4) augmented reality for shopping sites. Through the achievement of its goals, the CLEVER project will help to position Europe at the forefront of the intelligent edge computing field, enabling growth across many sectors (manufacturing, agriculture, smart environments, augmented reality, and others). By lowering the barriers for utilising edge computing for artificial intelligence applications, CLEVER will open the door for European Industries and SMEs to leverage state of the art technologies, driving their development and growth as leaders in their sectors.

A large part of production assets such as robotic arms, conveyor belts do not reach their maximal lifetime and become prematurely obsolescent. Anecdotal evidence from the automotive industry suggests that 60% to 70% of production resources is prematurely taken out of operation, scrapped, or at best sold for spare parts. The aim of ALICIA is to create and demonstrate a Circular Manufacturing Ecosystem (CME) for production resources, such as robotic arms or conveyor belts. The underlaying vision is that within five to ten years, production resources will be traded and reused to their maximum utility in-between factories in Europe, ultimately contributing to “closing the loop” of production assets as circular economy subjects. The project aim will be achieved by integrating and demonstrating in two real industrial environments (at Continental and Comau) a combination of innovative and symbiotic digital tools as key enabling technologies behind the ALICIA CME, ultimately enabling to design, deploy, run, decommission and re-circulate second-hand production lines 40% faster, reduce material consumption by up to 80% and reuse up to 100% of the assets. The innovations behind ALICIA include a machine-readable ontology for mapping factory owner requirements, an AI-matchmaking engine for combining incumbent factory assets with second-hand assets coming from the ALICIA online marketplace, a Plug & Produce middleware for seamlessly connecting the production assets and a Digital Shadow/Digital Twin to ramp-up and operate the ALICIA second-hand line. Novel Circularity-as-a-Service business models will be evaluated. ALICIA addresses the EU “machinery and equipment” as well as “machinery repair service” market segments, which together contributed 288 Billion EUR in value added to the EU economy in 2018. ALICIA is expected to contribute to increasing the EU’s resilience against disruptions in global supply chains and significantly contribute to the creation of a circular economy.