SafeCOP (Safe Cooperating Cyber-Physical Systems using Wireless Communication) will establish a safety assurance approach, a platform architecture, and tools for cost-efficient and practical certification of cooperating cyber-physical systems (CO-CPS). SafeCOP targets safety-related CO-CPS characterized by use of wireless communication, multiple stakeholders, dynamic system definitions, and unpredictable operating environments. In this scenario, no single stakeholder has the overall responsibility over the resulted system-of-systems; safe cooperation relies on the wireless communication; and security and privacy are important concerns. Although such CO-CPS can successfully address several societal challenges, and can lead to new applications and new markets, their certification and development is not adequately addressed by existing practices. SafeCOP will provide an approach to the safety assurance of CO-CPS, enabling thus their certification and development. The project will define a platform architecture and will develop methods and tools, which will be used to produce safety assurance evidence needed to certify cooperative functions. SafeCOP will extend current wireless technologies to ensure safe and secure cooperation. SafeCOP will also contribute to new standards and regulations, by providing certification authorities and standardization committees with the scientifically validated solutions needed to craft effective standards extended to also address cooperation and system-of-systems issues. SafeCOP brings clear benefits in terms of cross-domain certification practice and implementations of cooperating systems in all addressed areas: automotive, maritime, healthcare and robotics. The advantages include lower certification costs, increased trustworthiness of wireless communication, better management of increasing complexity, reduced effort for verification and validation, lower total system costs, shorter time to market and increased market share.

Farming is facing many economic challenges in terms of productivity and cost-effectiveness, as well as an increasing labour shortage partly due to depopulation of rural areas. Furthermore, reliable detection, accurate identification and proper quantification of pathogens and other factors affecting both plant and animal health, are critical to be kept under control in order to reduce economic expenditures, trade disruptions and even human health risks. AFarCloud will provide a distributed platform for autonomous farming that will allow the integration and cooperation of agriculture Cyber Physical Systems in real-time in order to increase efficiency, productivity, animal health, food quality and reduce farm labour costs. This platform will be integrated with farm management software and will support monitoring and decision-making solutions based on big data and real time data mining techniques. The AFarCloud project also aims to make farming robots accessible to more users by enabling farming vehicles to work in a cooperative mesh, thus opening up new applications and ensuring re-usability, as heterogeneous standard vehicles can combine their capabilities in order to lift farmer revenue and reduce labour costs. The achievements from AFarCloud will be demonstrated in 3 holistic demonstrators (Finland, Spain and Italy), including cropping and livestock management scenarios and 8 local demonstrators (Latvia, Sweden, Spain and Czech Republic) in order to test specific functionalities and validate project results in relevant environments located in different European regions. AFarCloud outcomes will strengthen partners’ market position boosting their innovation capacity and addressing industrial needs both at EU and international levels. The consortium represents the whole ICT-based farming solutions’ value chain, including all key actors needed for the development, demonstration and future market uptake of the precision farming framework targeted in the project.

The mmMAGIC (Millimetre-Wave Based Mobile Radio Access Network for Fifth Generation Integrated Communications) project will develop and design new concepts for mobile radio access technology (RAT) for mm-wave band deployment. This is envisaged as a key component in the 5G multi-RAT ecosystem and will be used as a foundation for global standardization. The project will thus enable ultrafast mobile broadband services for mobile users, supporting UHD/3D streaming, immersive applications and ultra-responsive cloud services. The consortium brings together major infrastructure vendors (Samsung, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Intel, Nokia), major European operators (Orange, Telefonica), leading research institutes and universities (Fraunhofer HHI Institute, CEA-LETI, IMDEA Networks, Universities Aalto, Bristol, Chalmers and Dresden), measurement equipment vendors (Keysight Technologies, Rohde & Schwarz) and one SME (Qamcom). To complement its strong industry leadership and academic excellence, the project has an Advisory Board drawn from major European telecommunications regulators in Germany, France, Finland, Sweden and the UK. A new radio interface, including novel network management functions and architecture components will be proposed, taking as guidance 5G PPP’s KPI and exploiting the use of novel adaptive and cooperative beam-forming and tracking techniques to address the specific challenges of mm-wave mobile propagation. The project will undertake extensive radio channel measurements in the 6-100 GHz range, and will develop and validate advanced channel models that will be used for rigorous validation and feasibility analysis of the proposed concepts and system, as well as for usage in regulatory and standards fora. The ambition of the project is to pave the way for a European head start in 5G standards, including 3GPP, and to secure essential IPRs to European industry, strengthening European competitiveness.

Over the past few years, we have been witnessing an increasing presence and usage of wearable sensing and quantified- self devices. The rise of embedded and wearable computing is expected to bring the next revolution of the Internet of Sports, enhancing fitness, performance health, productivity and safety as well as creating new jobs and opening new markets. Nevertheless, at a European level, there is a recognized shortage of highly skilled researchers, scientists and engineers with transferable skills and entrepreneurial experience, trained in building IT platforms and service infrastructures capable of hosting innovative collective sensing services and applications. The RAIS consortium comprising 6 beneficiaries and 7 fully committed partner organizations, aspires to establish the core for a fertile multidisciplinary research and innovation community with strong entrepreneurial culture that will advance:1) wearable sport-sensing and quantified-self devices and accompanying middleware;2) technologies of Big Data mining and analytics that are needed to capture a broad range of users’ sports- and wellness-related information.The main objective of RAIS is to provide world class training for a next generation of researchers, computer scientists, and data engineers, emphasizing a strong combination of advanced understanding in both theoretical and experimental approaches, methodologies and tools that are required to develop decentralized, scalable, and secure collective sensing infrastructures and platforms. RAIS training network will fund 14 ESRs, 3 workshops, 1 Hackathlon event, 1 entrepreneurship event, 3 summer schools and a final Conference. To meet this goal, RAIS will focus on developing new technologies on Big Data Analytics on the Edge, Data Stream Processing, Distributed and Decentralized Machine Learning, Blockchain as well as Security/Privacy. These topics include important and timely research challenges with an immediate exploitation potential.

To deliver on our European 6G vision for the 2030s, and to tackle opportunities and challenges of increasing magnitude, e.g., sustainability, trustworthiness, green deal efficiency, digital inclusion, there is need for a flagship project, towards the elaboration of a holistic 6G network platform and system. To fill this need, Hexa-X-II is proposed with the ambition of being this flagship project, and of inspiring the world for digital transformation through novel 6G services. Hexa-X-II will work, beyond enabler-oriented research, to optimized systemization, early validation, and proof-of-concept; work will progress from the 6G key enablers that connect the human, physical, and digital worlds, as explored in Hexa-X, to advanced technology readiness levels, including key aspects of modules / protocols / interfaces / data. Hexa-X II includes: (a) the provision of advanced / refined use cases, services, and requirements, ensuring value for society; (b) the delivery of the 6G platform blueprint, which will encompass enhanced connectivity for 6G services, mechanisms realizing the “networks beyond communications” vision (sensing, computing, trustworthy AI), efficient network management schemes; (c) the realization of extended validation at system and component level; (d) actions for global impact, while assuring strategic autonomy in critical areas for the EU. Europe is starting from the pole position with 6G research and is leading wireless network technologies today. Now is the time to leverage our joint research ambition with a flagship project that will lead the R&D effort towards end-to-end systemization and validation. The Hexa-X-II flagship is a unique effort and a holistic vision, of a 6G system of integrated technology enablers, which accomplish “beyond the sum of the parts”, and of a “network beyond communications” platform for disruptive economic / environmental / societal impact; these are vital for establishing the European 6G technology leadership!