Intelligent circular lifecycles of industrial robots, outdoor power products, and electric vehicles

Project Information

iCircular3

Grant agreement ID: 101073508

DOI

10.3030/101073508

EC signature date 2 June 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 August 2027

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 2 228 500,80

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, DUBLIN
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - iCircular3 (Intelligent circular lifecycles of industrial robots, outdoor power products, and electric vehicles)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2024-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The goal of iCircular3 is to train 9 researchers in the field of Circular Economy (CE) and its digital transition. In March 2020, the European Commission adopted the new CE action plan (CEAP), as one of the main building blocks of the European Green Deal, Europe’s new agenda for sustainable growth. The EU’s circular action plan paves the way for a cleaner and more competitive Europe. iCircular3 is engaged with three highly critical industrial sectors for the European economy: outdoor power products, robotics and electric vehicles (EVs). The outdoor power products industry is an innovative sector with one of the largest numbers of consumers and market share in the EU; advanced robotized manufacturing is prioritized as a solution to improve the performance of industrial processes, hence supporting European growth; and the EU is the world’s second-largest market for EVs, supporting the achievement of climate targets. The absence of intelligent models, guidelines and decision support systems that can aid next-generation designers to incorporate circularity in product design, manufacture and life cycles in practice represents a significant gap in the state-of-the-art.
This Doctoral Network (DN) of 7 partners comprises 4 industry and 3 academic partners.
The scientific and training objectives of the network are:
1. To develop new guidelines, frameworks, decision support systems and digital tools to incorporate and measure circularity in product and service design, (reverse) supply chain management, manufacturing technologies, product and service use, and EoL.
2. To understand and recognise cross-sectoral commonalities and differences in incorporating circular economy strategies, and standards and its digital transition.
3. To train a leading group of researchers in the multidisciplinary field of circular economy and its digital transition.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the course of our project, iCircular3, strong project management has been implemented and the governance structure is in place with regular meetings being held with the consortium in 2023 and 2024.

The doctoral candidates are in place and have participated in three of the planned network-wide training events at UCD, online and in Sweden and also the Year 1 and Year 2 project conferences. The doctoral candidates are receiving continual supervision with their research projects, PhDs, papers and plans for their secondments that will take place in 2025 and 2026.

Doctoral Candidate (DC) 1 Masood Ahmad started on the project on the 1st March 2024 is researching the deployment of DLTs to augment the product lifecycle platform when it comes to data management for industrial robots. He has also written a literature review on blockchain technology applications at various product lifestyle stages, accepted for presentation at the IFAC MIM conference in June-July 2025. He has also been focusing on familiarising himself with IOTA DLT technology and learning basic programming tools to design a decentralised platform.

DC2 Aaron Rios Villaneuva started on the project on 26th February 2024 and is receiving in-house training regarding maintenance and on condition monitoring of industrial robots in KUKA Robotics Ireland and is writing his literature review which covers environmental impact tools and indicators, robot performance metrics, lifecycle, failures and on condition maintenance. Work on publications is ongoing.

DC3 Sepide Kordestani started on the project on 8th July 2024. She has been developing a solid foundation in circularity, quality management and experience design through JTH modules and seminars. Work on publications is ongoing.

DC4 Waqas Ahmed, started on the project on 11th December 2023, and has been working on the technical development of utilising sensor data to build a digital tool for tracking the in-service status of the returned outdoor power tool
products. The first journal publication from this project has been developed between DC4 and JTH. He has also presented his work at a number of forums and further publications are planned, including an accepted paper for presentation at the IFAC MIM conference in July 2025.

DC5 Farzaneh Pouralireza Anari started on 13th August 2024 and has carried out an extensive literature review on circular economy assessment methods and tools. She is synthesizing the findings into a journal paper, identifying knowledge gaps and continuing to progress her understanding through relevant training and seminars.

DC6, Mohammad Rajabzadeh started on the project on 1st May 2024 and has conducted an extensive literature review on the second-life applications of electric vehicle batteries focusing on their potential to provide power to essential systems during power failures. He has a published (in press) conference paper about developing a framework for remaining Useful Life (RUL) prediction of EV batteries. He is currently working on refining and optimizing the LSTM model for predicting the State of Health (SOH) and Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of lithium-ion batteries. These findings will be published in academic journals and the writing of these papers is ongoing

DC7 Mojdeh Morshedi started on the 15th May 2024 and has conducted a thorough literature review, and a conference paper has been accepted for presentation on this in the CIRP Life Cycle Engineering in April 2025. She has also been focusing on the applications of intelligent circular supply chains and this will form the submission to a relevant journal, this work is ongoing. DC7 has also worked on developing her first technical use-case with KUKA Robotics Ireland and developed a framework for Circular Economy Customer Service 4.0 adoption. The preliminary outcome of this development has been accepted for presentation in the IFAC MIM conference in
June-July 2025.

DC8 Fernanda Rodriguez started on 23rd October 2023 and has collated information and updated the project website. She has been working on the linkages and exploiting the synergies between the digital and the CE agendas. She is developing technology readiness approaches to measure the readiness level of companies in adopting digital tools such as product passport and have conducted a thorough systemic literature review of intelligent circular, and has developed a conceptual framework. She received an acceptance for presenting in the IFAC MIM conference in June-July 2025. Journal publications are in progress.

DC9, funded by UKRI, started on 1st February 2024 and has deepened his understanding of the queuing theory, critical for optimizing the hybrid supply system and will be attending international conferences and presenting
his work on this. Work is ongoing on writing papers for high-impact leading journals.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The absence of intelligent models, guidelines and decision support systems that can aid next-generation designers to incorporate circularity in product design, manufacture and life cycles in practice represents a significant gap in the state-of-the-art.
The network objectives will advance state-of-the-art research and training by incorporating CE principles in product design, manufacturing, and lifecycles based on innovative deployment of digital technologies and data processing intelligence. This will lead to tackling the difficulties in disassembly, dismantling, reuse and recycling, driving the shift toward circular use of materials and products and minimising the generation of wastes.