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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ESMERA (European SMEs Robotics Applications)

Teaser

Within Europe a strong science basis exists through the EU universities and research centres which nevertheless has rarely fed into creating technology groups and industries. At the same time the 2020 global market value for robotics is estimated around 80€Bn creating a...

Summary

Within Europe a strong science basis exists through the EU universities and research centres which nevertheless has rarely fed into creating technology groups and industries. At the same time the 2020 global market value for robotics is estimated around 80€Bn creating a great opportunity for growth.
ESMERA acknowledges this opportunity to mobilize robotics SMEs and assist them in overcoming the infamous “Valley-of-Death”, which “traps” key enabling technology products and services from being transferred into the marketplace. The project focuses on EU SMEs that are oriented towards the development of novel technologies and are in need of both technical and business support to accelerate the transfer of their ideas to market.

ESMERA aims to support SMEs in the realisation, testing and promotion of robotic technologies through:
- Providing industrial challenges defined by key EU companies, stimulating SMEs to compete by developing and promoting new technologies to address real life problems that already have a market.
- Engaging a number of competence centres that can provide an easily accessible environment for developing, evaluating, testing, and demonstrating novel robotic technologies.
- Offering direct financial support through a cascade funding mechanism to supplement the technical excellence offered by the competence centres, allowing prototype/product creation and promotion
- Offering mentoring and support in developing business cases and managing the complete chain from “idea to market product” by EU champions in robotics that have successfully undergone the process
- Involving industrial associations and networks that can directly promote the developed solutions to their members, addressing a wide range of industrial sectors and applications

Work performed

The work performed in the first period of the project may be summarized as follows:
• ESMERA Competence Centers (CCs) set up
ESMERA is built upon four (4) CCs located in different European regions, LMS in Greece, CEA in France, TEKNIKER in Spain and TUM in Germany. These CCs provide cutting edge robotics equipment accessible for proof of concept, feasibility trials or demonstration experiments and also services such as: technology scouting, feasibility studies, networking etc.

•ESMERA Network set up
The activity refers to establishing the coordination mechanisms of the CCs under the ESMERA network:
• Deploying the CCs ensuring that all equipment and technical services are available to the SMEs.
• Setting up, testing and validating the ESMERA tools for the communication and coordination between the CCs. These tools offer proper organization, monitoring and reporting of the experiments
• Setting the rules and framework for the cooperation of the CCs and the robotics SMEs

• Challenge definition and documentation.
ESMERA Consortium contacted many companies and guided them through the challenge definition process. 38 challenges were received from multiple sectors and evaluated against their innovation potential and expected impacts leading to the selection of:
1. Oil and Gas Sector: Inspection and Intervention in Oil-Gas Environments
2. Nuclear power Sector: Nuclear Waste Sorting
3. Assembly Sector: Wire Harness Assembly Task
4. Assembly Sector: Dishwasher Door Gasket Assembly
5. Processing Sector: Paint Quality Check
6. Agri-food Sector: Autonomous Weed Control
7. Building Construction Sector: Heavy Tool Carrier in Construction Environments
8. Infrastructure Maintenance Sector: Vegetation Management

• ESMERA 1ST Open Call-FOCE
Between August 1st, 2018 and November 9th, 2018, ESMERA organized the first open call asking robotics SMEs to compete with each other and propose their solutions to the challenges. Experiments were selected on the basis of excellence, socioeconomic impact, clarity of the plan. The Call was carried out and managed in strict compliance with the “Good practices and templates for organizing open calls under the H2020 Financial Support to Third Parties scheme” set out by the EC.

• Results of 1st open call
The ESMERA-FOCE Call was published and evaluated through the ESMERA Open Call platform. In total 32 proposals were submitted, coordinated by participants from 14 different EU countries. The consortia comprised of 37 Companies, 10 Non-profit organizations, 12 Higher education and 4 Public bodies. 12 experiments were selected for funding to receive a total of 2,197,230.00 EUR.

• Impact Key Indicators Outline
During the first period ESMERA established the approach to setting impact indicators both for the individual experiments resulting from the calls and also for the ESMERA project as a whole. For the former the impact indicators will be aimed at assessing the overall impact on the experiment participant’s ability to exploit the results and the experiment sponsor’s business improvements. However, for the impact assessment of the project as a whole, the effects on the wider community, including employment effects are more significant.

• Evaluation of the experiments
The evaluation procedure included the following phases:
i. Remote Evaluation I: Two independent experts evaluated each proposal and submitted evaluation reports.
ii. Remote Evaluation II: In case the consensus was not reached by Remote Evaluation I, the third evaluator was assigned to the proposal.
iii. Physical Panel Meeting: A panel meeting was held with a subset of independent experts who acted as evaluators or rapporteurs during the Remote Evaluation.
The evaluation led to a ranking of the submitted proposals with the ones being ranked higher, selected for funding.

• Dissemination activities during First Period
In the first reporting period of ESMERA, dissemination and communication activities were aimed

Final results

The main areas that ESMERA aspires to advance the EU robotics sector are:
• Technology Excellence
o Carrying out a number of research experiments (at least 32) demonstrating the proof of concept for new robotic technologies.
o Multi sectorial challenges requiring step changes in robotics in multiple areas: Perception, Actuation, Manipulation, Mobility, Cognitive ability etc.
o Availability of state-of-the-art equipment, infrastructure and technical expertise by the CCs.

• Organizational Excellence
o Agile industry development and engineering by development, deployment, promotion of new robotic technologies
o Supporting SMEs in all stages:
- technology development by CCs
- Business Plan development by facilitators
o market promotion mentoring by established accelerators and robot providers

• Competence Excellence
o Increase of collaboration skills and culture,
o New collaboration and partnering skills between CCs and SMEs
o Challenges as a means for competitive technology development process.

• Business Excellence
o Contributing to overall growth of SMEs targeting new robotics markets
o Challenges coming from robot resistant sectors, opening new markets for robotics
o Extra funding and business mentoring for challenge winners–Active promotion to market

Website & more info

More info: http://www.esmera-project.eu.