Smart Cyber-Physical Systems

Specific Challenge: Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) refer to next generation embedded ICT systems that are interconnected and collaborating including through the Internet of things, and providing citizens and businesses with a wide range of innovative applications and services. These are the ICT systems increasingly embedded in all types of artefacts making ""smarter"", more intelligent, more energy-efficient and more comfortable our transport systems, cars, factories, hospitals, offices, homes, cities and personal devices. Focus is on both reinforcing European industrial strengths as well as exploring new markets.

Often endowed with control, monitoring and data gathering functions, CPS need to comply with essential requirements like safety, privacy, security and near-zero power consumption as well as size, usability and adaptability constraints. To maximise impact and return on investment in this field, the following challenges must be addressed:

         De-verticalising technology solutions with CPS platforms that cut across the barriers between application sectors including mass consumer markets.

         Bringing together actors along the value chain from suppliers of components and customised computing systems to system integrators and end users.

         Creating new ICT Platforms for both vertical and core markets from automotive, health , smart buildings and energy to wireless communications and digital consumer products and services.

Scope: Activities should address the development of new paradigms, concepts, and platforms or toolboxes laying the foundation for future generations of CPS. Participants should include suppliers and users of CPS, tool providers, suppliers of sub-systems, system integrators, auditors/certification bodies of systems and related academia and research institutes (including Social Sciences and Humanities).

a.      Research & Innovation Actions should cover one or both of the following themes:

         Modelling and integration frameworks: modelling techniques and comprehensive integrated tool chains for clearly defined use cases. Major aspects to be addressed include the holistic modelling of the system behavioural, computational, physical and/or human aspects of CPS; and the seamless interoperability between CPS tools. Solutions should ensure flexibility and tractability of systems.

         Smart, cooperative and open CPS: Methods for engineering Cyber-physical Systems that are able to respond in real-time to dynamic and complex situations while preserving control, system safety, privacy, reliability, energy efficiency and dependability features, and addressing security and privacy ""by design"" across all levels. This includes CPS that are aware of the physical environment, enabling effective and fast feedback loops between actuation and sensing, possibly with cognitive and learning capabilities; further CPS with cooperation and negotiation capabilities supporting distributed services, autonomous, reactive and targeted problem solving and/or improved man-machine interaction. Also covered are open and heterogeneous CPS and Systems of Systems to facilitate seamless connectivity, dynamic reconfiguration as well as handling of emergent properties. The developed methods should enable evolutionary, adaptive and iterative system life-cycles and guarantee Quality of Service at functional and extra-functional level.

Projects are expected to be driven by industrial requirements, to be well balanced between industry and academia, and to include a demonstration and validation phase with realistic use cases.

b.      Innovation Actions will stimulate innovation and connect innovators across value chains in view of broader adoption of novel embedded and cyber-physical systems technologies and their enablers in industrial and societal applications. Proposals should cover one or both of the following themes.

         Towards platforms and ecosystems: Prepare reference architectures and platforms for open, smart and co-operative CPS applicable across sectors and application domains, including industrial consensus building, reference implementations, pre-normative activities, proof-of concept demonstration, user involvement and validation in key application domains. Proposals requesting a Small contribution are expected.

         Towards a ""smart everywhere"" society: Support will go to the establishment of European networks of embedded systems design centres. The networks' goal will be to help businesses from any sector uplift the quality and performance of their products and services with innovative embedded ICT components and systems. This will be done through a number of development and experimenting actions conducted with the help of the centres. Clustered in large scale projects and driven by user requirements, these experiments must facilitate users-suppliers partnerships across value chains and regions. With special emphasis on SMEs and mid-caps, focus is on technologies and processes, which are customised, integrated, tested and validated at the system level. The network must include vertical competences from embedded software and systems down to the components subsystems and components level and foster collaboration and trust, as well as openness and pre-normative measures. Work should build on and be complementary to EU, national and regional activities such as pilot projects in ENIAC, ARTEMIS and ECSEL.

Proposals requesting a Large contribution are expected. The action may involve financial support to third parties in line with the conditions set out in Part K of the General Annexes. The consortium will define the selection process of additional users and suppliers running the experiments for which financial support will be granted (typically in the order of EUR 50.000 – 150.000 per party).  Maximum 50% of the EU funding requested by the proposal should be allocated to this purpose.

c.       Support Actions for cross-sectorial platform-building, structuring of constituencies and road-mapping, dissemination of programme achievements and impact analysis,   development of a strategic collaboration agenda for pre-competitive research on the foundations of modelling and simulation of CPS with the US, consensus building related to business models and non-technical societal and legal issues relevant to the wider diffusion of embedded and cyber-physical systems (e.g. human behaviour, social aspects, liability, security and privacy).

Expected impact:

         Reduction of development time for CPS by 30% as compared to the state-of-the-art in 2013 and significant reduction in maintenance costs.

         Stronger pan-European collaboration across value chains and technology levels from the components and hardware to higher systems level creating open innovation eco-systems and stimulating consensus building on open tools, platforms and standards.

         Development in Europe of a competitive offer for next generation core ICT platforms spanning from operating systems and middle ware to application development and deployment tools with built-in security. This should translate into a significant increase of Europe's market share in this area and in higher added value generated from embedded ICT.

         Uplifting Europe's innovation capacity and competitiveness across all economic sectors with the wider adoption of networked embedded ICT, notably in SMEs.

Types of action:

a.       Research & Innovation Actions – A mix of proposals requesting Small and Large contributions is expected

b.      Innovation Actions – A mix of proposals requesting Small and Large contributions is expected

c.       Coordination and Support Actions