• Funding & tender opportunities

Altogether 18 proposals were received for this cut-off date, all of which were evaluated by the SmartEEs Evaluation Panel. The funding amount for each of the selected projects will be decided during the contracting phase.

If you would like to know more about the 4th cut-off evaluation results, please click here.
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If you are interested in SmartEEs funding opportunities, you can apply anytime until 20 September 2019. The final cut-off date for evaluations is 20 September 2019 (deadline: 17:00 CET).

Amires had a strong presence at the EuroNanoForum 2019 bi-annual event taking place in Bucharest from 12th to 14th June. This event is focusing on both the industrial application of research results and future strategic research priorities in the area of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials of the Horizon 2020 NMBP Programme and beyond. The event was composed of a conference, workshops, exhibition, site tours, brokerage events and social events, all of which made it a worthwhile occasion.

Amires booth exhibited a number of projects the company is involved in as well as the company’s in-house developed software products AMIplexus and EffiBUILDING. The projects displayed showed the wide range of topics Amires is involved in from photonics & electronics pilot lines (InPulse, Lyteus, SmartEEs, InSCOPE) and nano-enabled materials (OASIS), to additive manufacturing (Manuela) and energy storage (Smart2Go, SABINA).

• EUR 545.6 million- Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
• EUR 628.4 million- Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials, Biotechnology and Advanced Manufacturing and Processing (NMBP)
• EUR 123 million – the PILOTS and Factories of the Future (FOF)

• Horizon 2020 work programme 2018-2020
• Rules of contest
• FAQs

Hurry up and apply before 28 May!  

A revamped AMIPLEXUS 3.1 was released in April 2019 with new features.
The New features include:

• Word clouds – quickly visualize your text search results
• Highlighting – see where your search terms popped up to easily confirm their relevance
• Organization cooperation – assess cooperation links between selected organizations

While the Additional data for Horizon 2020 is as below:

• Results in Brief, Summaries, Reports and Work Performed – further increasing the relevance of your text searches

Contact us for a free 15-min presentation or trial version, to discover how AMIPLEXUS can add value to your innovation-based decisions!

• Gathering the manufacturing capacity of 12 pilot lines from nanoparticles to final product.
• Establishing a thorough service offer for associated technical & business development
• Granting direct access to the whole ecosystem through a Single Entry Point, for easier access especially for SMEs.

• Stand: OE-A booth
• Stand-No: 2016, Hall B0
• Further information about the OE-A competition at LOPEC 2019: https://www.lopec.com/general/program/lopec-award/index.html

Altogether 26 proposals were received for this cut-off date, all of which were evaluated by the SmartEEs Evaluation Panel. The funding amount for each of the selected projects will be decided during the contracting phase.

If you would like to know more about the 3rd cut-off evaluation results, please click here.
​​​​​​​
If you are interested in SmartEEs funding opportunities, you can apply anytime until 20 September 2019. The next cut-off date for evaluations is 19 April 2019 (deadline: 17:00 CET).

copyright Lyteus_Bottle with OLED printed label

The Smart2Go project, officially started on 1^st January 2019, organized its first meeting on 14-15 January 2019 in Dresden (Germany) at the Fraunhofer FEP Institute. Smart2Go is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme aiming at the development of an autonomous energy-supply platform. Based on the results of the project it will be possible to use a wearable without caring about recharging over its entire lifetime. More information about the project can be found at www.smart2go-project.eu (full version available in April 2019).

During the meeting, 9 EU innovation performers (researchers and companies) involved in flexible electronics and energy scavenging and storage and 2 industries with very challenging product use cases discussed the work plan for the development of materials and components to be integrated in the energy storage and harvesting system. External experts in the field of standards for printed electronics, flexible electronics based products and R2R coating, printing and laminating processes also participated to the meeting. 

Smart2Go project has a duration of 36 months, please, stay updated about the upcoming project results!

The legislation adopted by Parliament does not cover the precise terms for grant applications under Horizon Europe; that will come later from the Commission. The current rules have been criticised for being too bureaucratic, and there is a concern that the next set could be even worse. Another concern is the budget for agriculture research. There is a proportionate cut in terms of agriculture, food and natural resources from the Commission’s 10.6 per cent (of the Horizon Europe budget) to 9 per cent, at a time when there are huge challenges for the agricultural sector in meeting the needs of food security and emissions reduction in line with the Paris agreement. This topic is likely to be a subject of further discussion.

At first, careful instrumentation and adaptation of LPBF & EBM machines will allow increased process reliability and speed. Secondly, the pilot line – including the adapted processes – will be deployed. The hardware layer will integrate novel process quality control monitoring and automated post-AM handling and processing. The line will be fed by design/optimization and AM process simulation workshops. Those workshops will collect continuous feedback from the physical parts of the pilot lines, to increase process reliability and robustness. MANUELA relies on a consortium composed of industrial end user’s, suppliers, (material/powder, AM hardware, quality monitoring system, software, automation and post-AM treatment) as well as top research institutes in powderbed metal-AM, covering full range of AM technology chain for pilot line deployment. The deployed pilot line will be validated with use cases, covering wide span of applications including automotive, aerospace, energy and medical.

Our database for the energy efficiency solutions for buildings have been presented to the ECTP conference on the 13^th and 14^th November in Brussels.

More than 170 stakeholders from the whole construction value-chain and representatives of the European Commission shared their experience and discussed how the EU construction industry is shaping a high-tech Sustainable Built Environment.

EffiBUILDING was presented as a platform to disseminate and exploit the project results, together with the best case of our Member GOLD Q-Air from Trimo Group, attracting many questions and excellent inputs from the conference audience. Presentation is available for download here.

Most of the presentations of the conference were focused on the results from the consultation between the European Commission and large industries and how their requirements are reflected into the upcoming H2020 calls. Some aspects were highlighted several times during the event: 1) the required interconnection amongst the different European platforms and pilotlines and 2) the importance of data sharing for the definition of common standards and interfaces. Automation in manufacturing processes and sustainability of the developed technologies were also discussed. During the Medical Technologies session, digitization was pointed out as the current main driver of the industry.

In AMIRES booth, which was a part of the event’s exhibition, the various industrial technologies stakeholders were able to find how they can better benefit from the European research and innovation ecosystem. Examples inlcude:

• Universities, RTOs and companies can increase their chances in winning Horizon 2020 funding, find the right partnrs for innovation, follow the latest technology trends and benchmark their performance via AMIplexus cooperation visualizaiton tool 
• SMEs can innovate their product portfolio by digitization, adopting flexible electronics with the help of SmartEEs European accelleration program for integration of flexible electronics technologies into novel products and apply for the call for applications
• Companies can explore new lighting applications with help of Lyteus European pilot line for flexible OLEDs
• Companies can ask InScope pilot line for a help with integration of Hybrid TOLAE (H-TOLAE) technologies in the automotive, healthcare, smart packaging and building sectors

AMIPLEXUS is a tool for project coordinators, group leaders, technology scouts, advisers, and coaches who want to:

AMIPLEXUS version 3 has been released as part of our commitment to continuously provide better and more efficient user experience. The new platform is more user friendly and intuitive; in addition to the previously available semantic based text search and network visualisation showing collaborations and ecosystems of organisations.

The new features in the versions 3 include:

• Faster Loading
• Faster Searches
• More user friendly and intuitive user interface
• Data analysis of funding data through interactive and downloadable graphs
  These graphs allow the user to visualize the funding trends for various technological areas as by way of analytical visualization in terms of interactive and downloadable graphs for the number of projects, type of funding schemes, and funding cost corresponding to the search criteria. The graphs also allow the comparison of the participation potential of different organizations in H2020 and FP7 programmes.

• Geolocation of relevant organizations through interactive and downloadable maps
  When searching using different criteria, the interactive maps display the geographical locations of the related organisations on an interactive map for the H2020, FP7, Eureka and Eurostars programmes.

• Data filtering through interactive and downloadable data tables
  The data tables are interactive and downloadable and contain pertinent information about organisations in H2020, FP7, Eurostar and Eureka programmes that are related to the search criteria. The user can further search and filter within the tables to obtain a specific set of  relevant information.

Altogether, 18 proposals were received for this cut-off date and they were all evaluated by the SmartEEs Evaluation Panel. The funding amount for each of the selected projects will be decided during the contracting phase.

If you would like to know more about the 2nd cut-off evaluation results and about the selected application experiments, please click here.

If you are a start-up, an SME or a Mid-cap and if you have an idea of how to integrate flexible electronics technologies provided by SmartEEs consortium into novel end-products, you can still apply until the expiry of the 3rd cut-off date – 16 November.

The second InSCOPE workshop “Embracing Opportunities in Smart Packaging” was held at CPI premises, Darlington, the UK on 26^th September 2018. The event featured a series of presentations from industry experts in hybrid and embedded printable electronics, discussions, networking and a tour of CPI’s newly expanded printable electronics scale-up facility. InSCOPE presented their findings and opportunities of a pilot line service to advance the accuracy and reliability for hybrid printable electronics and discuss the pharma approach to smart packaging.There were a number of drivers discussed, which included:

• Diabetes – there’s a significant rise in the number of people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes that need constant support in order to manage their conditions. This is an opportunity for lightweight wearables/tags and sensing systems. There are opportunities for development of smart wearable (potentially transdermal) patches that can
  1. Measure levels of glucose or other biomarkers in sweat/blood
  2. Measure levels of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API – potentially insulin) in the patch
  3. Deliver medication/API to the body as part of a feedback loop

• Poor patient adherence/compliance – the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) estimates that long term adherence to medication is as low as 50%. There’s a significant opportunity for smart packaging solutions to support an improvement in this.

• Crowded market for direct mail – there is currently no way to understand if a directto-home mailing has been opened/read. Interacting with a smartphone could give usage statistics or lights or ‘bling’ could make the mailing look more attractive and increase customer interaction probabilities. Note that cost/price of the electronics needs to be low here, although there is a discussion to be had on price versus value to the customer carrying out the mailing. The ELEP envelope case was specifically discussed.

• End of life/sustainability – there’s a Worldwide drive to reduce waste, including plastics. This presents opportunities for reuse of packaging and using electronics to identify materials as they go into waste streams, this could enhance recyclability.

In order to realise smart packaging and printable electronic solutions InSCOPE has a significant capability set (seen by workshop participants on the 26^th September 2018) ranging from:

1. Test and validation of printed electronic materials – this includes inks (for sensing, conductivity, antennas etc), adhesives, active substrates etc.
2. Process design, development scale up and test of printed electronic components – including antennas, sensors, communication etc
3. Product and process design, development scale up and test of flexible hybrid electronic sub-systems and devices – such as smart packaging, smart tags, labels, wearables etc

The InSCOPE project is particularly keen to talk to organisations interested in the development of smart packaging in order to support process and device development as well as scaling up to market seeding volumes.

Click HERE and find out more about the Call for Application Experiments, the Helpdesk, the evaluation process and more.

In preparation of the upcoming Horizon Europe Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, the European Commission has published a report titled “Review of Issues Related to Methods, Criteria and Indicators for Widening Actions“. The report provides recommendations for selection of criteria and indicators that might be used to define targets for future “Widening Actions” designed to address inequality in research and innovation performance across EU Member States.

The assessment indicates that there are advantages and disadvantages to all potential indicators and that no single indicator adequately captures all aspects of the research and innovation process. Existing composite indicators could be adopted, but there are disadvantages in terms of complexity, timeliness and the ease with which these indicators can be reproduced. An alternative approach to combining indicators is proposed based on “filtering” Member States using their ranking on three selected variables:

• Economic status – GDP per head
• Research performance – % of scientific publications in the top 10% citations
• Innovation performance – Number of PCT Patent applications per million population

The report recommends that the Commission considers further the merits of a “filtering” approach based on the three shortlisted variables. Click HERE to access the report.

Research and developmental efforts have been engaged in the race to develop zero energy and carbon free buildings in European cities. Due to the dual impact on both visual aesthetics and energy efficiency, façade technologies have naturally been a point of increasing interest within the Horizon 2020 framework, predominantly in the Innovation Action (IA) and Research and Innovation Action (RIA) sectors. Current technologies under study in H2020 include fluid flow glazing and multifunctional ventilated façades, HVAC and ICT systems, integrated PV and, solid-state perovskite solar cells. Other areas of research are focused on the development of novel biopolymer and composite materials, as well as the establishment of an eco-friendly, efficient manufacturing method for mass production.

Research projects within H2020 have been targeted towards the market introduction and acceptance of an end-product, materials and/or manufacturing process that defines the perfect balance between energy efficiency, environmental friendliness, safety, comfort and cost. Additional desirable properties that would set the standard for future state-of-the-art façade technologies include lighweightness, reduced CO2 emissions, adaptability, high performance insulation, low intrusiveness, reliability and durability. The complete market penetration of these products is, however, currently hindered by limitations such as bulkiness, high costs and insufficient thermal energy conversion efficiency. While the focus is mainly on the development of novel technologies, a few of the projects (e.g. LaWin) plan on developing their products based on already existing platforms to enable rapid market access.
As shown in Figure 1, the largest number of façade technologies projects to have received funding were within the IA and RIA schemes suggesting a clear interest in the advancement of already mature technologies. Expectedly, the largest investments made by the European Union were received by these projects, with only relatively low funds reaching CSA and MSCA initiatives.

Key players in this technological area are: FRAUNHOFER GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FOERDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG EV (Research organisation, Germany), ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FEDERALE DE LAUSANNE (Higher Education Institution, Switzerland), Rina Consulting S.P.A. (Private for profit organisation, Italy), NEDERLANDSE ORGANISATIE VOOR TOEGEPAST NATUURWETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK TNO (Research Organisation, Netherlands), FUNDACION TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION (Research organisation, Spain), FUNDACION CARTIF (Research organisation , Spain), YOURISCOM (Brussels), ACCIONA CONSTRUCCION SA (Private for profit organisation, Spain), ACCADEMIA EUROPEA DI BOLZANO (Research organisation, Italy), AGENCIA DE L’HABITATGE DE CATALUNYA (Public body, Spain), SISTEMES AVANCATS DE ENERGIA SOLAR TERMICA SCCL – AIGUASOL (Private for profit organisation, Spain)

Ongoing projects in this technological field:

• TRACKWAY
• InDeWaG
• GOTSolar
• PoLaRoll
• Q-Air
• ESPResSo
• BRESAER
• BuildHEAT
• ABRACADABRA
• GELCLAD
• 4RinEU
• Envision
• PLUG-N-HARVEST

Past projects in this technological field:

• LaWin
• E2VENT

If you are a start-up, an SME or a Mid-cap and if you have an idea of how to integrate flexible electronics technologies provided by SmartEEs consortium into novel end-products, you can still apply until the expiry of the 3rd cut-off date – 16 November. Please note that SmartEEs will not support the development of your technologies or research activities, but the integration of existing technologies of involved research teams (RTOs), as described in the Marketplace, into your end-products.

Good luck!

Yesterday, the government of the United Kingdom has released a technical notice, providing more details to the UK participants to H2020 on terms of the current participation and the continued support to research and innovation by UK government. By extending the underwrite guarantee, the eligibility of UK researchers and businesses to participate in Horizon 2020 will remain unchanged for the remaining duration of the programme. This is set out in the Financial Provisions of the draft Withdrawal Agreement, which has been agreed by both UK and Commission negotiators and welcomed by the other 27 EU countries at March European Council. Moreover, the government states that as a responsible government it needs to plan for every eventuality to ensure that cross-border collaboration in science and innovation can continue after EU exit.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has been chosen to manage the underwrite delivery. In the first instance, UK recipients of Horizon 2020 funding will be invited by UKRI to register their details on a dedicated portal on the GOV.uk website expected to go live in the autumn. The portal is designed to ensure that UKRI has initial information about projects and participants in order to keep researchers and businesses informed of the next steps regarding the implementation of underwrite payments, should they be required.

More information on the extension of the underwrite guarantee can be found HERE.

A report on the 11th Annual Concentration and Consultation Workshop on Micro-Nano-Bio-Systems (MNBS2017) has been released! The report covers the state of play of EU-funded Micro-Nano-Bio-Systems cluster, which unites EU funded projects covering research, development and system integration across technologies such as microelectronics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, biomaterials, and ICT.  During MNBS207, AMIRES presented planned development and commercialization of the Horizon 2020 funded MEDILIGHT project technology for a healing of chronic wounds and also contributed to the definition of recommendations on how to address the main identified challenges in advancing MNBS technologies.

Click HERE to access the report.

Altogether, 19 proposals were received for this cut-off date, 18 of which were evaluated by the SmartEEs Evaluation Panel. The funding amount for each of the selected projects will be decided during the contracting phase.

If you would like to know more about the 1st cut-off evaluation results, please check the Public evaluation report form SmartEEs website.

Two funded schemes are available to boost the research and digital skills of students or young professionals.

Marie Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF-2018) for companies is a new Horizon 2020 opportunity which allows companies to hire qualified researchers at “post-doctoral” level (Ph.D. or master and at least 4 years full-time research experience) for a maximum of 2 years to work on a “bottom-up” (self-chosen) research project. More information about the Marie Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF-2018) for companies is available here.

Furthermore, The EU Commission has developed a specific traineeship scheme to strength ICT specific skills, in fields like cybersecurity, big data, quantum technology and machine learning or boost digital skills for business in areas like web design, digital marketing, and software development. The pilot project will be financed by Horizon 2020 and implemented through Erasmus+. The Digital Opportunity traineeship initiative will start in June 2018 and more all companies are welcome to offer digital traineeships, in particular, those involved in the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition and businesses active in Horizon 2020.

AMIRES offers the opportunities to host talented researchers and students through these innovative schemes to work on data for innovation. If you believe you can make the difference and you are motivated to join our team, please contact us at bajarova@amires.eu.

Today, the European Commission has released its €94.1 billion budget proposition for Horizon Europe, an upcoming seven-year research programme, which was labeled the EU’s ‘most ambitious ever’. If approved, this would constitute a €17.1 billion increase compared to the current popular and oversubscribed Horizon 2020 framework programme. The biggest share of funding, namely €52.7 billion, will be allocated to pillar two – global challenges and industrial competitiveness. Within this pillar, the following clusters were defined:

1. Health – €7.7 billion
2. Inclusive and secure societies – €2.8 billion
3. Digital and industry – €15 billion
4. Climate, energy, and mobility – €15 billion
5. Food and natural resources – €10 billion

The plan is to increase the ERC budget to €3.6 billion and support the open innovation (including the European Innovation Council) with a total of €13.5 billion. Money for countries that lag behind the highest performing states will now be allocated to “strengthening European Reseach Area”, which is expected to be supported with €2.1 billion, namely €1.7 billion are planned to go to sharing excellence actions and €400 million to reforming and enhancing the European R&I system.

Planned novelties of Horizon Europe are for example moonshot missions and new rules to ease foreign access. In addition to Horizon Europe, the Commission plans a separate budget line of €4.1 billion for defense research.  Despite the proposed budgetary increase compared to Horizon 2020, the application success rates that are currently about 11,9% under Horizon 2020 might not improve, mainly due to the cuts of research funding at national levels and stimulation of higher numbers of applicants, Jean-Eric Paquet, director general for research and innovation at the Commission warned.

More information about the proposal for upcoming Horizon Europe can be found HERE.

SOLWATT targets to significantly reduce the water used by CSP plants (by 35% for wet cooled & by 90% for dry cooled). The project proposes to demonstrate the efficiency of innovations on solar field cleaning, power-block cooling, water recycling system, and plant operation strategy. Among these are solutions to reduce solar field water cleaning needs, an operation and maintenance optimizer software including soiling forecaster, a MEE water recovery technology running on otherwise dumped heat from the solar field, and a cooling concept for the turbine condenser storing excess heat when ambient is too warm, then releasing it during cool night times.
The solutions will be implemented at two CSP operational sites, “La Africana” parabolic trough plant in Spain and “Ashalim” central receiver plant in Israel, to demonstrate significant reduction in water use while making CSP more cost effective and achieving near-to-market status. The solutions are best applied together, but each will also bring water and cost savings on its own, thanks to their ability to fit any kind of CSP plant; dry, wet, or hybrid cooled, existing or future ones, tailored to location and policy framework. Their application will save more than 0.5 M€/year of operational cost for a 50 MW CSP plant.
Regarding competition on water resources and humanitarian issues, the social acceptance of CSP will be increased by detailed analysis of case studies and education of local population to the benefits of solar energy.
The targeted savings of water and operation costs will increase CSP’s competitiveness compared to other renewable energy and the electricity market in general, as well as its acceptance within local communities, achieving a big step forward in the SET plan goals for CSP technology by 2020. The consortium, led by TSK Electrónica y Electricidad S.A. (Spain), is made up of 13 partners from 6 European countries plus Israel, including 5 industrials partners, 2 SMEs, 5 RTOs and one University.

The following image shows four showcases in the InSCOPE project related to automotive (top left), medical packaging (top right) and smart buildings (bottom left and right).

FIRST RESULTS
In today’s dynamic world, media architecture is one of the most current and recognized fields in urban planning and building design. The Kone Corporation foresees these large area media surfaces being an integral part of future urban space and living. Therefore, developing intelligent wall materials, rather than displays, enables digital solutions to be part of the spatial experience by forming dynamic interior designs.

A first demonstrator prototype of the interactive media surface was shown in PRINSE2018 and at Lopec 2018. The surface was created using roll-to-roll manufacturing of 200 mm x 2400 mm, flexible and transparent display engines. The engines have individual controllable RGB LEDs capable of displaying video content and producing dynamic lighting effects. Scrolling information updates are performed using a Chrome browser application and Bluetooth connection. Long distance capacitive proximity sensors enable UI activation, while short distance capacitive proximity sensors support passenger selection. The media panel can identify people in the elevator with up to one-meter distance, and can recognize different users (adult, child, disabled).

Finally, as part of the UI panel, the haptic feedback element provides user selection feedback. Haptic feedback technology is revolutionizing human-machine interfaces (HMIs), with touch-enabled interfaces already well on the way to replacing traditional pushbutton controls in a broad range of markets.

“We were looking for large scale production using printed electronics solutions, and the InSCOPE project has given us the opportunity to study, share visions and needs based on these technologies,” said Jukka Korpihete, senior lighting design specialist at Kone. The Kone Corporation will implement a total of 18 square meters of interactive media surfaces to an elevator car as a final demonstrator of the product.

To learn more about production guidelines for printed electronics, InSCOPE created the public design handbook of the pilot line (available from the project website at http://inscope-project.eu/handbook/). The EU-funded InSCOPE project will continue to target improvements of advanced printed functions and advanced silicon devices that enable thin, lightweight, bendable, and even stretchable products.

Contact for press:
Jana Mwangi (Mesikova)
E-mail: mwangij@amires.eu
www.inscope-project.eu

The 1^st cut-off for submission of application experiment proposals expired on 19 March, and the evaluation process of submitted proposals is still ongoing. Stay tuned for more information about the results of the selection process which will soon be published here.

If you are a start-up, an SME or a Mid-cap and if you have an idea of how to integrate flexible electronics technologies provided by SmartEEs consortium into novel end-products, you can still apply until the expiry of the 2^nd cut-off date – 20 July. Please note that SmartEEs will not support the development of your technologies or research activities, but the integration of existing technologies of involved research teams (RTOs), as described in the Marketplace, into your end-products.

Good luck!

Q-Air represents one of the leading European innovations, which is underlined by being selected and supported by Horizon 2020 programme (GA No. 737757), a Fast Track to Innovation Pilot (FTIP) scheme. An innovation project Q-Air: Sustainable Prefabricated Glass Façade with Performance Exceeding State-of-the-art Glass Façades of five consortium partners Trimo, Kohlbecker Gesamtplan, ZAG, Cantori and Skandinaviska Glassystem is dealing with the innovative sustainable glass facade Q-Air and its broad positive impacts across architecture, building industry, environment and society.

More information about the Q-Air Transparent, Opaque and Combination Unit prototypes is available in the Façade category of the EffiBUILDING database.

Lopec is a meeting place for all the important players from printed electronics community. AMIRES team had a pleasure to exhibit at Lopec this year, presenting the latest results and funding opportunities of SmartEEs, InSCOPE and Lyteus, the three H2020 projects related to the flexible electronics technologies.

Visitors to our booth could discover some remarkable solutions of printed electronics technologies and benefit from the conversation with lead partners present at the stand.

SmartEEs team presented their open call for the integration of flexible electronics technologies into novel products and encouraged potential applicants to apply for funding. For all those companies that already have a prototype, InSCOPE is a great choice providing scaling-up services for H-TOLAE-enabled new features. The greatest eye-catcher was Lyteus, specialized in promoting flexibility of OLED lighting and showcasing plastic integrated products.

Several interactive activities, such as a presentation from the Commission and a cocktail party were organized at our booth. Mr. Henri Hajbenbach, the EU Project officer, revealed that the EC supported Flexible and Large Area Electronics projects with more than 300M € of contribution over the past 13 years.

During the two days of Lopec AMIRES had a chance to explore interesting new ways on how printed electronics and hybrid manufacturing of integrated smart systems are changing the future. Here are some of the takeaways from this world’s leading trade fair.

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology exhibited glasses with organic solar cells integrated into the lenses. The glasses display temperature and sunlight intensity. From the most modern technologies, the thinnest and most flexible electronics, the LG caught our attention with a 4.5 mm thick OLED TV. CuteCircuit, a UK based company, showcased a handbag that was not only beautiful but also interactive and transformable. It is app-controlled with display text, Tweets, and animations.

LOPEC is, indeed, a one-stop – shop for creativity and turning interesting and daring ideas into reality. See you next time LOPEC.

But we don’t have crossed arms with this success, we are committed to continually improve and upgrade our AMIPLEXUS PLATFORM . Recently we have included the most up-to-date information for the Eurostars (March 15th 2018) and Eureka (April 15th 2018) funding programmes.

Users can visualize Eurostars data with inclusion of both the “Type of organization” and “Country” categories differentiated by differing colours, which was not available in previous versions. Currently for the Eureka program, this colour differentiation feature works for the “Country” category.

Moreover, for the Horizon 2020 dataset the users were able to search information relating to various Topics, Calls and even Funding Schemes. In a similar fashion, with the current updates on Eurostars and Eureka programmes, the users are able to filter their searches on either Technology areas and / or Market areas which are analogous to “Topics” and “Calls” found within the H2020 programme.

To demonstrate the applicability of AMIplexus platform we have been also publishing a series of reports and targeted analysis on various relevant technological areas. The technological analysis cover trending topics such as: Photovoltaics, Spectral Imaging, Autonomous Vehicles, Regenerative Medicine , Photonic Integrated Circuits, Collaborative Robots , Smart Factories and recently Flexible, Wearable and Organic Electronics.

MAKE YOUR INNOVATION DECISIONS WITH AMIPLEXUS!!

• Development of lED displays for advertisement manufacturing process combining Roll-to-Sheet and Roll-to-Roll of flexible electronics with In-mould hybrid integration of TOLAE (Thin Organic and Large Area Electronics) and photonics components – Optintegral project (IA)
• demonstrate the influence of different surface enhancing and modification techniques on Carbon fibre -based materials for high value and high-performance applications including CNF-based structures for flexible electronics applications- MODCOMP project (IA)
• Improving the specificity and sensitivity of flat panel X-ray detectors and more importantly advancing the safety of environment and health by establishment of a new solvent-free manufacturing process for large area hybrid-organic electronics – DiCoMo project (RIA)
• Leveraging the large area and organic electronics to turn classical ceramic tile into a “multifunctional electronic luminous tile” – LUMENTILE project (RIA)
• Developing a pilot line for the manufacture and system-level integration of flexible organic electronics OLEDs into products by creating an open access mode and serve customers from along the value chain with individual product designs, validation of upscaling concepts, and system-level flexible OLED integration – PI-SCALE project (IA)
• Taking advantage of wearable electronics and Big Data to collect data and quantify behavioral community patterns on child and adolescent obesity. The collected data will be used to reshape policies at a regional. national and European level on obesity by having in place data-driven effectiveness predictions about specific policies on a community and the real-time monitoring of the population response – BigO project (RIA)
• Moving beyond current TOLAE demonstration through a major technology jump that drives scalability towards nanoscale resolution and high-definition cost-effective printing. This will be achieved by engineering and scaling up to industrial lines, some new multifunctional high-performing inks and high-resolution roll-to-roll (R2R) process or sheet-to-sheet (S2S) processes of electronic printing of including nano-imprinting and gravure printing – ATLASS project (IA)
• Acknowledging the potential of printed electronics as revolutionary to electronics industry with an annual growth rate of 32.5% and ability to regain the market share of Europe in electronics, there is need to ensure there is sufficient industrial supply of nanomaterials which are low cost, high performance., environmentally friendly and tailored for high throughput systems. Therefore, better collaboration will be enhanced and encouraged between supply chain partners to ensure nanomaterial production and nanomaterial formulations are tailored for end use applications to meet this need – INSPIRED project (IA)
• Applying the concept of nanomaterials for printing application to flexible printed electronics and more specifically to printed batteries and provision of new sources of nanomaterials (for example metallic particle (Ni. Cu. Al) and layered positive active material such as LiNi1/3Mn1/3Co1/3O2 (NMC) and olivine LiFePO4) for the formulation of conductive and electrochemical inks to be used in flexible electronics – BASMATI project (IA)
• Providing an open access pilot line service for Hybrid Thin Organic and Large Area Electronics (H-TOLAE) technologies capable of sampling products at industrially relevant environment (TRL6) and system prototype demonstration in operational environment (TRL 7) – InSCOPE project (IA)
• Bringing flexible electronics from lab to market through the development of extremely thin, flexible and durable electronics and establishing the supply chain that allows for standardized manufacturing at the lowest cost and highest volumes of Near Field Communication (NFC) tags and cards and their printable substrates (paper, cardboard, plastic, …) for the advancement of Internet of Things and the ‘internet of games’ – PING project (RIA)
• Create a technology acceleration hub dedicated to help innovative companies to access new markets and grow their business in adopting OLAE (Organic Light Advanced Electronics) technologies in new products lines. The hub is essentially an organized European innovation network dedicated to OLAE. This network seeks to advise startups, small and medium companies interested in OLAE to be more competitive through innovation and new business models- SmartEEs project (IA)
• development of optoelectronic materials and devices (organic solar cells, photodetectors and image sensors as well as organic light-emitting diodes) which operate in the near infrared (NIR) region. OSNIRO –(MSCA)
• reduction of the time to market of OLEDS and organic thin film transistors and circuits with fast operation. Reduction of the production costs of organic devices by enabling a fully solution processed technology coupled with reduction of design costs at circuit level through an integrated model linking molecular design to circuit operation- EXTMOS (RIA)
• Modelling stability of organic phosphorescent light-emitting diodes so as to integrate various levels of theoretical materials characterization into a single software package, to streamline the research workflows in order for the calculations to be truly usable by materials engineers, complementary to experimental measurements- MOSTOPHOS (RIA)
• Development of a smart, wearable system, which will provide a personalized therapy for treatment of chronic wounds using the effect of blue light – MEDILIGHT (RIA)

• Development of new generation Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems for detecting and thwarting threats targeting industrial installations. This system holistically combines multiple layers comprising of a monitoring layer for traffic probes, a control and coordination layer for gathering and consolidating heterogeneous data from different and remote probes, a decision and analysis layer and finally a human-machine layer that present system behavior to the human end user in a simplistic manner – SCISSOR project (RIA)
• Development and demonstration of workplace solutions that support the inclusion of increasing elements of knowledge work on the factory floor by empowering workers on the shop floor with smart factory ICT infrastructure – FACTS4WORKERS (IA)
• Technology fostering for SMEs by creating a methodological and technical framework to allow adaptation of robotic solutions and putting in place infrastructures and environments that will act as clustering points for selected application areas in manufacturing and for product lifecycle management – HORSE (IA).
• Provision of technology and infrastructure to enable Reconfiguration as a Service for dynamic smart factory systems and manufactured smart products that take advantage of cloud-based services and computing power to continually optimise the performance of manufacturing systems and products with respect to key performance characteristics including throughput, power consumption, utilization, maintenance and other factors – SAFIRE (RIA)
• Developing simulation methodologies and multidisciplinary tools for the design. engineering and management of CPS-based (Cyber-Physical Systems) Factories. These efforts are aimed at strategically supporting production-related activities during all the phases of the factory life-cycle, from the integrated design of the product-process- production system, through the optimization of the running factory, and finally through to the dismissal/reconfiguration phase – MAYA (RIA)
• Supporting the development of increased automation and increased customization in smart factories by encouraging flexible and adaptive work organization is crucial both for productivity and work satisfaction. This will be achieved by developing adaptation solutions with which people with different skills. capabilities and preferences can be engaged. motivated and productive members of the work community in manufacturing industries – Factory2Fit (RIA)
• With smart homes and smart factories in mind, develop smart acoustic technologies and ultrasound intended for Human to Machine and Machine to Machine Interfaces by applying acoustics a touchless activation and control mechanism and developing different smart acoustic technology blocks (hardware, software and system level) and integrating these blocks at system level – SILENSE (RIA)
• Laser-based Additive Manufacturing (LBAM) lacks competitiveness in terms of (i) lack of integration with production planning systems which hinders process traceability and resource optimisation and (ii) the need for human intervention, especially in post-processing operations. Thus, a multiprocess production cell will be developed which integrates cutting-edge LBAM machines and ICT innovations produce a fully finished product from the incoming raw material – HyproCell (IA)
• Demonstrate a set of integrated tools for the rapid and autonomous reconfiguration of agile production systems, both at operational as well as managerial levels, integrated with the existing production planning and scheduling tools. These next-generation flexible production systems and the proposed set of enabling ICT tools will allow a rapid and cost-efficient reaction to dynamic market changes, also in small-lot production contexts, reducing the efforts needed to switch between product types and production quantities – ReCaM (IA)

• Building collaborative aerial robotic workers with the capability to autonomously conduct infrastructure inspection and maintenance tasks – AEROWORKS (RIA).
• Technology fostering for SMEs by creating a methodological and technical framework to allow adaptation of robotic solutions and putting in place infrastructures and environments that will act as clustering points for selected application areas in manufacturing and for product lifecycle management – HORSE (IA).
• Developing new automation concepts for aircraft assembly by employing innovative technologies such as collaborative robots, movable robotics platforms, grippers, compact and lightweight robots. This is aimed at achieving high production rates and reduced costs with maximum production flexibility – ACOTAAL (CS2-IA).
• In the niche of consumer entertainment robotics, a humanoid robot will be developed. This robot will have the capabilities of interacting and engaging with the public autonomously and naturally in the dynamic environments of a public shopping mall. – MuMMER (RIA)
• Creating an integrated system for collaborative robotics which can deliver kits, tools, parts and hold pieces on the factory floor during assembling processes – ColRobot (IA)
• Developing a hybrid work cell for inspection purposes with advanced robotic capabilities while acknowledging the cost implication of fully automating industrial operation and leveraging on cost-efficient human-robot cooperation – CRO-INSPECT (CS2-RIA)
• Deliver the most advanced but flexible space autonomous system suitable for single and/or collaborative space robotic missions which demand robust operations with adaptable levels of autonomy ERGO (RIA)
• In order to address ethical concerns on the future of robotics including job replacement, there is need to offer proactive steps towards ethical and responsible robots by suggesting radical changes in current robot design procedures – REELER (RIA)
• Improving the interaction of human and robots in the workplace by endowing robots with the ability to control physical collaboration through intentional interaction. This will be achieved via force and motion tracking technology, robot learning using cognitive models of human behavior in collaborative tasks and innovative technology for helping humans through predictive physical collaboration – An.Dy (RIA)
• As a continuation of previous projects (COMET, SAPHARI, and poliMATIC) develop Symbiotic Human-Robot Solutions for Complex Surface Finishing Operations to automated polishing techniques in manufacturing processes aimed at complex shaped metallic surfaces – SYMPLEXITY (IA)
• Equipping a collaborative and inherently safe assembly robot with cutting-edge sensory and cognitive abilities as well as reasoning abilities required to plan and execute an assembly task for easier and quicker adaptability and installation in an assembly line – SARAFun (RIA)
• With the rise in labor costs, especially in automotive and the aeronautics industrial sectors, mobile dual arms robots will be created with abilities to perceive their environment and through reasoning, cooperation with each other and with other production resources including human operators and even be able to navigate in the shop floor and utilize dexterous tooling to perform multiple operations – THOMAS (IA).