ESPRIT synopses, 1992.
The Commission of the European Communities, Directorate-General XIII, has issued a series of synopses of current projects, actions, working groups and other activities taking place within the ESPRIT programme. Listings cover all ESPRIT activities and include a keyword index, an index of acronyms, project numbers and titles, synopses of completed and ongoing work, synopses of new projects and activities, and information on ESPRIT publications. Each project is described in terms of its aims, approach and methods, progress and results, potential, project-linked publications, and information dissemination activities. Start date, duration, the organizations involved, and contact information is also given. The synopses are published in seven volumes, each covering one ESPRIT area: - Volume 1, Basic Research: The main objectives of ESPRIT Basic Research are to replenish the reservoir of new knowledge from which industrial research can draw to ensure tomorrows innovation, and to ensure the environment for training new researchers. Basic Research is an upstream activity whose results feed into several of the more industrially oriented activities of the programme. The year 1992 has marked an important stage in the evolution of this ESPRIT area. Most of the activities from the first call of 1988 have come to a close, and at the same time many new activities from the second call (October 1991) have started. The response to the second call was very positive. A total of 440 proposals were received, of which 108 of the highest quality were accepted. The proposals included most, if not all, top-ranking European research teams. The call itself focused on a number of priority themes identified after consultation with experts from academia and industry. The aim was to support research activities with a concrete tangible application in the medium to long term (5-10 years). The new priority themes are intended to ensure continuity with ongoing research while introducing new orientations with clear potential for eventual industrial use and impact. - Volume 2, Microelectronics: The Microelectronics activities of the ESPRIT programme concentrate on the development of process technologies, equipment and design tools required by European electronics systems manufacturers. A major area of interest is the design of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICS), demonstrably the best way to achieve improved performance and more cost-effective and reliable electronic products. All ESPRIT I projects have been completed, and most of those begun under ESPRIT II will be finalized during 1992. In the third phase of ESPRIT, as a result of the 1991 call, 47 projects and 5 special actions are being launched during 1992 in the Microelectreonics domain. - Volume 3, Information Processing Systems and Software: Since its outset in 1984, the aim of this part of ESPRIT has been to encourage the development of a scientific basis for software engineering from which a range of industrial products can be designed and implemented. The software development process is viewed in the wider context of complex system development. This ensures that the collaborative, precompetitive actions of ESPRIT have addressed the real problems faced by today's software industry in Europe, particularly the creation of high quality software products and improvements in the productivity of the software development process. The current phase of ESPRIT sees the continued evolution of IPSS interests, with individual technology strands increasingly combined to address wider and higher-value problems. The first call in this phase, which resulted in the launch of 54 new projects, focussed on the three topic areas of system design and engineering, information services and their interfaces, and advanced architectures and their applications. - Volume 4, Advanced Business and Home Systems/Peripherals: The ABHS-P area of ESPRIT is concerned with developing the strengths of European industry in IT systems designed to support office, business and home applications. It aims to provide vendor-independent integrated IT systems to help improve white-collar productivity and the quality of life, both at work and at home. The work of ABHS-P reflects the growing importance of workstations and advanced displays as well as an increasing use of multimedia information and need for distributed systems. A total of 45 new projects were launched during 1992, together with a number of special actions. - Volume 5, Computer-Integrated Manufacturing and Engineering: The main objective of the CIME subprogramme within ESPRIT is to expand the Community's share if the market for computer-integrated manufacturing to a dominant level in the European market and to achieve significant penetration of non-EC markets. In addition, it is expected that the CIM programme will accelerate the modernization process in a wide range of industries, ranging from discrete parts production to continuous processes. Towards this objective, 72 projects and actions are being launched under the 1991 call for proposals, to consolidate and extend the advances made by the 127 ongoing and completed CIME projects and actions in the first two phases of ESPRIT. - Volume 6, Open Microprocessor Systems Initiative: OMI aims to bring the open systems concept to the level of on-chip microprocessor systems and their associated software. A framework and standards for an open, licensable, library of macrocells will be provided, as well as conformant macrocells of a number of available processors, new processors and other on-chip functions. Emphasis is given to the applications software needed to integrate these components into on-chip systems. From the 1992 start of the initiative, there has been significant interaction between the technical projects and users, through both applications demonstrators within projects and applications studies in a number of market segments. In the next stage, a number of applications pilots will be implemented, based on this initial work. - Volume 7, Information Exchange System. Research Networking for Europe: Further improvements were achieved in the last year concerning communications facilities for European researchers in general, and for participants in the ESPRIT programme in particular. Two main lines of support aim to strengthen research network components at the European level. These are the cooperation and interconnection of the national research networks, as undertaken in the context of COSINE and RARE, and pilot projects with specific targets such as IXI and Y-NET. Some further activities relating to European research networking have also been promoted, such as the European Consultative Forum of Research Networking (ECFRN).