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.

SPIRIT aims to develop an "inspection skill" for robots that takes the step from programming of complex inspection tasks to configuring such tasks. For system integrators this will reduce engineering costs and effort for deployment of inspection robots by 80%. Results include an "offline framework" with features such as model-based automatic coverage planning for complex parts, automatic robot program generation and an "inline framework" that deals with sensor data mapping to transfer 2D measurements to the 3D object model. At the heart of the project is an accurate process-specific model that represents the sensor data acquisition process with sufficient accuracy to allow automatic planning. The "offline framework" will include a generic interface to allow the easy exchange of process models (for different inspection technologies), of the CAD model of the part (for a different type of product to be inspected) or of the work-cell model (for a different kinematic structure). The generic "inline framework" will provide the backbone for the execution of the actual inspection process. Relying on such a proven frameworks will reduce the risks of implementing complex inspection tasks and thus help the deployment of inspection robots. The three end-users from the automotive and aerospace industry as well as the technology providers and system integrators in the project all have experience with the above mentioned technological issues and estimate that a potential of 600 to 1000 additional robotic installations can be realized per year. The generic frameworks will particularly enable SMEs to address a larger market beyond their regional focus by reduce the risk of setting up inspection robots, Considering the exploitation potential the SPIRIT project will achieve a suitable return on investment for the project partners within about 2 years.

The vision of TINKER is to provide a new cost- and resource efficient pathway for RADAR and LIDAR sensor package fabrication with high throughput up to 250units/min, improved automation by 20%, improved accuracy by 50% and reliability by a factor of 100 to the European automotive and microelectronic industry via additive manufacturing and inline feedback control mechanisms. Autonomous driving and self-driving cars represent one prominent example for the use of microelectronics and sensor, most importantly RADAR and LIDAR sensors. Their respective markets have a big potential, e.g. it is estimated that the market size of LIDAR in automotive will double itself in the next two years (within 2020 to 2022). The public awareness and the industrial need for further miniaturization of such sensor packages is the main driver of ongoing efforts in the automotive sector to be able to integrate such devices into the car body like in the bumps and head lamps instead of attaching them (e.g. on top of the car in case of LIDAR device). Safety (for the driver and others) is the most important key aspect of the automotive sector. Therefore highly-value and high performance RADAR and LIDAR systems are required for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) as well as robotic cars. Current bottlenecks are relevantly large size of such sensor devices, their weight and power consumption. Since these factors are highly limited within cars, further miniaturization and improving functionality and efficient use of resources is highly demanded.

Smart, SME Friendly, open, Zero-Defect Manufacturing Reference Platform, Apps, SDK, and Marketplace for Product and Process Quality in any factory for achieving excellence in European and Global Manufacturing The ZDMP project combines state of the art technological approaches based on commercial grade standard or open-source or previous-project software with an innovative integration concept based on proven and integrating technologies. It provides Process and Product Quality support on top of a platform layer. These all can utilise ZDMP core services which can also be used to build ZD Apps which are placed on the ZD Marketplace. The ultimate aim is to establish a sustainable business and technological approach at the end of the project and launch “ZDMP Limited” assisted by the possibility of a crowdsourcing approach and ZDMP ambassadors. ZDMPs pan-European consortium entails ICT Technology SMEs (ICE, ASC, SOFT), Manufacturing/ZD Technology SMEs (PROF, CET, VSYS), Technology Corporates (SAG, Scale Focus), 4 Sector and Cross-Domain Use cases (14 Partners SME/Large from Automotive, Machine Tools, Construction, Electronics), Researchers/Associations (IKERLAN, ITI, UNINOVA, TUT, and UPV), specialists (DIN – German Standards, Rooter – Regulation, UOS-ITI – Call Management). ZDMP also is supported by the Coordinating partners of FOF projects CREMA, vf-OS, and C2NET.