The growth of cities, impacts of climate change and the massive cost of providing new infrastructure provide the impetus for this proposal – entitled Training in Reducing Uncertainty in Structural Safety (TRUSS) – which will maximize the potential of infrastructure that already exists. If flaws in a structure can be identified early, the cost of repair will be vastly reduced, and here an effective monitoring system would allow identifying the optimum time to repair as well as improving structural safety. But safety is difficult to quantify and requires a deep understanding of the uncertainty associated to measurements and models for the structure and the loads. TRUSS will gather this understanding by bringing together an intersectoral and multidisciplinary collaboration between 4 Universities, 11 Industry participants and 1 research institute from 6 European countries. The consortium will combine and share expertise to offer training at an advanced level as new concepts for monitoring, modelling and reliability analysis of structures are emerging all the time. TRUSS will make knowledge of structural safety grow by incorporating these emerging technologies (hi-tech monitoring and manufacturing, computing, etc.) into the training programme and it will support job creation by enabling a wider talent pool of skilled and accredited engineering graduates with business, entrepreneurship, communication, project management and other transferrable skills. The training programme will be structured into taught modules combined with original research supported by secondments that will expose 14 fellows to both academia and industry. While developing tools that will reduce uncertainty in structural safety and improve infrastructure management, TRUSS will lay the basis for an advanced doctoral programme that will qualify graduates for dealing with the challenges of an aging European infrastructure stock, thereby enhancing their career prospects in both industry and academia.

COROMA project proposes to develop a cognitively enhanced robot that can execute multiple tasks for the manufacturing of metal and composite parts. COROMA will therefore provide the flexibility that European metalworking and advanced material manufacturing companies require to compete in the rapidly evolving global market. The main output of COROMA project will be a modular robotic system that will perform multitude of different manufacturing tasks in an autonomous way to adapt to the production requirements. The robot will be capable of performing drilling, trimming, deburring, polishing, sanding, non-destructive inspection and adaptive fixturing operations. Using a simple interface the robot will receive basic commands that require a minimum programming effort from the human operator. The robot will autonomously navigate in the workshop and will automatically perceive the manufacturing scene and locate the part that must be manufactured and even handle some of the required tools. Learning from previous experiences during displacement, tool grasping, part localisation and the manufacturing process itself, the robot will improve its performance. It will be able to interact with other machines in the shop floor and to work on a part even while other manufacturing operations are being performed by these other machines. Safe human-robot and machine-robot collaborations will be paramount and the robot will automatically react to the presence of both humans and other machines. The modularity of the COROMA robot will permit to customize it to meet specific requirements from different manufacturing companies. These challenges require a project consortium where the latest robotic technologies meet knowledge from manufacturing experts, including both industry and academia. COROMA project consortium presents a perfect balance between manufacturing and robotics sectors' players.

Environmentally-Assisted cracking (EAC) is one of the major failure modes occurring in light water reactors (LWRs). The condition of surfaces exposed to the primary coolant plays a main role on the susceptibility of components to EAC. However, many national and international guidelines and standards do not address surface condition of critical components in nuclear power plants (NPP) The goal of the MEACTOS project is to improve the safety and reliability of Generation II and III of NPP by improving the resistance of critical locations, including welds, to EAC through the application of optimized surface machining and improved surface treatments. MEACTOS is proposed by a consortium of 16 partners from 11 EU member countries (Spain, France, Finland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Germany, Slovakia, Romania, UK, The Netherlands and Slovenia) plus Switzerland (associated country of Euratom), that comprises all the appropriate key players to ensure the availability of technologies, capabilities, technical and operational knowledge required for the goal of the project. Research laboratories (VTT, SCK-CEN, CVR, CIEMAT, PSI, JRC, RATEN), universities (UNIMAN, USFD, STUBA) nuclear components suppliers (The NAMRC of the University of Sheffield, ENSA, SA.),utilities (EdF), engineering companies (ZAG, AMEC) and plant designers (AREVA-NP) has been selected in order to complete the required capacities to cover all the expertise fields faced by the project. The Consortium members have differential but complementary skills and expertise in areas such as project management, manufacturing, technology transfer or dissemination, to name a few key areas. Pro-active material degradation programs outside Europe, particularly in Japan and in the United States, currently address, or plan to address, surface condition with respect to EAC. This European MEACTOS project will directly benefit Europe, engaging on an equal footing with these initiatives, maintaining a level of competitiveness for European industry in the global scenario.