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.

In the project year 2018, the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences submitted an application in the Erasmus+ KA 107 International Credit Mobility Programme for the first time and received funding for the mobility of incoming students and the mobility of teaching and administrative staff (incoming and outgoing).The Faculty of Economic Sciences has already been in charge of several projects with the Ghanaian and Kenyan partner universities. In all areas, exchanges took place even before the Erasmus+ KA 107 project.With the approved EU subsidies the exchange could be partly intensified and enabled a more extensive exchange.The exchange in the field of personnel mobility could be extended to other departments within the university and thus leads to a strengthening of the cooperation, especially with the Ghanaian technical universities.The Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences aims to continuously increase the proportion of international students, especially students from developing and emerging countries, which was made possible by supporting students through the Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility Programme.The cooperation with the technical universities in Ghana should contribute to achieving the strategic goals of building up and developing competences through international cooperation. One indicator in the evaluation of the quality of the University of Applied Sciences is international networking. Another is the proportion of staff with further academic qualifications. It is therefore absolutely necessary for the TUs to exchange academic staff and prepare student exchanges.A total of eleven mobilities could be promoted in the 2018 project, including seven incoming student mobilities (three from Ghana, four from Kenya), four further mobilities are divided between incoming and outgoing staff mobility. Among the personal mobilities are one outgoing mobility and three incoming mobilities from Ghana and Kenya. As a rule, the personal mobilities are further education mobilities, sometimes with a teaching component.Due to the worldwide development of the corona pandemic, further staff mobility planned for spring 2020 could not be carried out and was postponed to 2021. Since, due to job cuts, no further personnel capacity is available to carry out the project in 2018 at the Bonn-Rhen-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, a decision was made against extending the project duration.The incoming students were all enrolled in the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration and took part in English-language courses and a language course here.The personnel mobility that took place all follows the overall objective of consolidating the university partnerships and the Africa cooperation of the H-BRS, as well as strengthening and building up the competence of employees and lecturers at the technical universities.The objectives set out in the funding application have been largely achieved and will continue to be pursued in the future. The proportion of incoming students from African countries was increased. These should also serve as a bridge to outgoing student mobility.Cooperation in teaching and administration was increased.

The economic crisis and pandemic in South Mediterranean and sub-Saharan countries have put the HEIs in a challenge to accommodate for the new requirements of online teaching. The RL4Eng project aims to improve the quality of higher education in third countries and make it more relevant into the today’s digital transformation world through establishing Remote and Virtual Laboratories for Teaching and Training Engineering Students to modernize the current teaching approaches and improve the digital and entrepreneurial capacities of both students and teachers in South Mediterranean and Sub-Saharan HEIs. The project’s contribution to the priorities of the call includes the digital transformation under which digital education is the focus of the project. Online teaching for laboratories has been implemented in EU countries with successful outcomes. The involvement of different European Universities will help integrate good practices and minimise potential risks in implementing the RL4Eng project. South Mediterranean HEIs have identified the necessity of training with numerous initiatives available in the European system. Few Research is available on the effective delivery of remote labs and take-home labs. The project involves several workpackages in efforts made to elevate the knowledge of remote labs and take-home labs in the partners institutions via capacity building for students, staff and faculty and share of experiences. A remote lab will be established in each country of the partners institutions and a take-home lab will be established in each HEI of the partner countries. The very nature of remote labs, and take-home labs makes them sustainable and easily scalable as they becomes part of the university structure and receives part of its budget. Moreover, the nature of the remote labs makes them sustainable as they are accessible from everywhere and could be used for both teaching and for research.

This action supports physical and blended mobility of higher education students and staff from/to third countries not associated to Erasmus+. Students in all study fields and cycles can take part in a study period or traineeship abroad. Higher education teaching and administrative staff can take part in professional development activities abroad, as well as staff from the field of work in order to teach and train students or staff at higher education institutions.

Efficient NII (non-intrusive inspection) of containerised freight is critical to trade and society. Freight containers are potential means for smuggling (e.g. tobacco), illegal immigration, trafficking of drugs, mis-declared goods and dangerous illicit substances, including explosives, nuclear material, chemical and biological warfare agents and radioactively contaminated goods. One inspection NII technology cannot cope with all these targets. The C-BORD Toolbox and Framework will address all these targets and enable customs to deploy comprehensive cost-effective container NII solutions to potentially protect all EU sea- and land-borders, satisfying a large range of container NII needs. The C-BORD Toolbox will include 5 complementary innovative detection technologies: delivering improved X-rays, Target Neutron Interrogation, Photofission, Sniffing and Passive Detection. User interfaces and data will be integrated to optimise effectiveness and efficiency of end-users and systems. The C-BORD Framework will help customs analyse their needs, design integrated solutions, and optimise the container inspection chain; it will address detection levels, false alarm levels, throughput, health & safety, logistics and cost & benefits. C-BORD will increase the probability of finding illicit or dangerous content with at least equal throughput of containers per time unit, reduce the need for costly, time-consuming and dangerous manual container inspections by customs officials, and in case a container is opened, increase the probability of finding illicit materials. C-BORD involves stakeholders from 8 EU countries, as partners (5) and advisory group members (3). On 3 custom sites integrated solutions will be trialled, respectively addressing the needs of big seaports, small seaports and mobile land-borders. To optimise sustainable impact, C-BORD will actively engage with a large community, will support policy implementation, evolution and start early exploitation planning.