Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ShapeFuture (Ensuring European ECS Value Chain Sovereignty through Shaping the Future of ECS for Automotive Applications)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2024-05-01 al 2025-04-30
The global industry is undergoing a profound transformation—from manual manufacturing to industrial digitalisation and robotics—demanding deep understanding of increasingly complex products.
Electronic Components and Systems (ECS) have played a key role in these industrial evolutions, evolving from basic vacuum tubes to integrated circuits, microprocessors, sensors, and advanced communication technologies.
In mobility, ECS have enabled significant progress. For over a decade, automotive systems using perception technologies have helped prevent collisions and support automation, now widely available in mass-market vehicles. At the same time, mobility is being reshaped by environmental concerns, urban congestion, and the need for sustainable, safe transportation—aiming toward zero emissions and zero fatalities.
Achieving ECS sovereignty is not only key to Europe’s economic resilience but also to its strategic autonomy. ShapeFuture fosters collaboration across the ECS value chain—sharing knowledge, aligning on innovation goals, and investing in foundational research to strengthen Europe’s position in future mobility.
ShapeFuture envisages that:
- Green mobility in Europe is pillared on European supply chains with no more significant dependencies or supply limitations.
- There is a highly competitive OEM-Tier1-Tier2-SME-Academia EU chain
- European ECS supply chains are resilient and also able to innovate and provide competitive products and services in mobility in ECS concepts/architectures, designs, technologies and manufacturing capabilities.
The project mission is to lay the foundations for competitive European ECS solutions to foster manufacturing value chains in mobility. This mission entails:
• the delivery of a new generation of perfected ECS, for each vehicular subsystem essential to perception, cognition, Human-Machine Interface (HMI), processing and decision-making, as well as resilient operation and communications. Each of these sub-systems unifies the critical components required to realize a specific function – perception, cognition, decision making and secure automation and communications – through vertical integration within an adaptive architectural framework, abstracting internal implementation, enabling portability and facilitating modular development of automation that is guaranteed as safe by design.
Electronic Components and Systems (ECS) have played a key role in these industrial evolutions, evolving from basic vacuum tubes to integrated circuits, microprocessors, sensors, and advanced communication technologies.
In mobility, ECS have enabled significant progress. For over a decade, automotive systems using perception technologies have helped prevent collisions and support automation, now widely available in mass-market vehicles. At the same time, mobility is being reshaped by environmental concerns, urban congestion, and the need for sustainable, safe transportation—aiming toward zero emissions and zero fatalities.
Achieving ECS sovereignty is not only key to Europe’s economic resilience but also to its strategic autonomy. ShapeFuture fosters collaboration across the ECS value chain—sharing knowledge, aligning on innovation goals, and investing in foundational research to strengthen Europe’s position in future mobility.
ShapeFuture envisages that:
- Green mobility in Europe is pillared on European supply chains with no more significant dependencies or supply limitations.
- There is a highly competitive OEM-Tier1-Tier2-SME-Academia EU chain
- European ECS supply chains are resilient and also able to innovate and provide competitive products and services in mobility in ECS concepts/architectures, designs, technologies and manufacturing capabilities.
The project mission is to lay the foundations for competitive European ECS solutions to foster manufacturing value chains in mobility. This mission entails:
• the delivery of a new generation of perfected ECS, for each vehicular subsystem essential to perception, cognition, Human-Machine Interface (HMI), processing and decision-making, as well as resilient operation and communications. Each of these sub-systems unifies the critical components required to realize a specific function – perception, cognition, decision making and secure automation and communications – through vertical integration within an adaptive architectural framework, abstracting internal implementation, enabling portability and facilitating modular development of automation that is guaranteed as safe by design.
The first year of the ShapeFuture project has been marked by significant milestones and achievements in Innovation Stream 1 (INN1), which focuses on developing advanced Electronic Control Systems (ECS) for perception. Over the reporting period, substantial progress has been made across organizational, collaborative, and technical dimensions, laying the groundwork for the project's success.
Moreover, the work carried out during this initial period of the project has been simple from the technical point of view, but quite complex from the organizational one, as was expected for this phase. Thorough analysis of the project proposal, especially regarding achievement of objective 2, was carried out in order to determine the practical level of involvement required by partners in this innovation stream at each stage of the project. Once this was determined, relevant partners were invited to a kick-off meeting in which the basic steps towards having a successful completion of the objective were taken:
Another objective was to reach human-like cognitive capabilities, which results in machines being able to make more informed decisions in real time through more advanced perception, reasoning, and learning processes. The technological advancements developed within the project will be showcased on an automotive application where they will be applied and tailored to an ODD of an automotive vehicle and showcased on enhanced perception systems and decision-making processes.
In the first year of the project, great efforts were made to clearly understand each partner role within the project, as well as collaboration practices.
In addition, the project seeks to pioneer ground-breaking technologies that fortify automation systems and communication networks against disruptions, ensuring the seamless operation of critical applications even in challenging and unpredictable conditions.
Last, ShapeFuture wantss to develop ECS solutions that empower resilient automation, bolster communication infrastructures, and enhance situational awareness, thereby revolutionizing industries such as transportation and urban planning.
Last, work was dedicated to ensuring that ECS developed within ShapeFuture meet the demands of both users and industries, thereby strengthening technology sovereignty. By systematically investigating user acceptance and industry needs, this stream bridges the gap between technological development and real-world application. Through the QETAM model, which evaluates critical factors like usefulness, usability, trust, social influence, and facilitating conditions, the stream provides actionable insights that guide the refinement of ECS solutions. This approach ensures that the developed technologies are not only innovative but also practical, trustworthy, and aligned with the expectations of diverse stakeholders.
Moreover, the work carried out during this initial period of the project has been simple from the technical point of view, but quite complex from the organizational one, as was expected for this phase. Thorough analysis of the project proposal, especially regarding achievement of objective 2, was carried out in order to determine the practical level of involvement required by partners in this innovation stream at each stage of the project. Once this was determined, relevant partners were invited to a kick-off meeting in which the basic steps towards having a successful completion of the objective were taken:
Another objective was to reach human-like cognitive capabilities, which results in machines being able to make more informed decisions in real time through more advanced perception, reasoning, and learning processes. The technological advancements developed within the project will be showcased on an automotive application where they will be applied and tailored to an ODD of an automotive vehicle and showcased on enhanced perception systems and decision-making processes.
In the first year of the project, great efforts were made to clearly understand each partner role within the project, as well as collaboration practices.
In addition, the project seeks to pioneer ground-breaking technologies that fortify automation systems and communication networks against disruptions, ensuring the seamless operation of critical applications even in challenging and unpredictable conditions.
Last, ShapeFuture wantss to develop ECS solutions that empower resilient automation, bolster communication infrastructures, and enhance situational awareness, thereby revolutionizing industries such as transportation and urban planning.
Last, work was dedicated to ensuring that ECS developed within ShapeFuture meet the demands of both users and industries, thereby strengthening technology sovereignty. By systematically investigating user acceptance and industry needs, this stream bridges the gap between technological development and real-world application. Through the QETAM model, which evaluates critical factors like usefulness, usability, trust, social influence, and facilitating conditions, the stream provides actionable insights that guide the refinement of ECS solutions. This approach ensures that the developed technologies are not only innovative but also practical, trustworthy, and aligned with the expectations of diverse stakeholders.
Within the scope of WP1, the focus was on defining the requirements for ShapeFuture technologies and determining their verification and validation methods. The primary objective was to ensure that the component and system-level requirements for the various demonstrators were aligned across the consortium, creating a unified and consistent approach. During the first period of the project, WP1 focused on establishing a robust framework for gathering and managing project requirements. This foundational work ensures that all necessary inputs are systematically collected to support subsequent project phases. A centralized requirements database has been created, with each partner contributing their data and specifications. This database will serve as the core repository for each demonstrator, facilitating collaboration and consistency across work packages.
WP2 has per objective the definition of ShapeFuture system design. It will be based on the requirements and specifications collected in WP1 and will design the systems and subsystems architecture that will be used to drive the technological developments and ensure the proper alignment for the integration of the various ECS.
The work has started in M4 and currently proceeds as planned. All tasks are active and following the established timeline. At the moment, no delays and deviations from plan have been reported.
WP4 started at M07. WP4 focuses on the AI-enabled computing systems and algorithms used for the end-to-end infrastructure of each of all the innovations streams. To this end, WP4 map the goals of SHAPEFUTURE into engineering requirements, to meet the KPIs of each innovation. Furthermore, WP4 will identify, propose and develop AI-enabled solutions for advanced vehicle operations.
WP2 has per objective the definition of ShapeFuture system design. It will be based on the requirements and specifications collected in WP1 and will design the systems and subsystems architecture that will be used to drive the technological developments and ensure the proper alignment for the integration of the various ECS.
The work has started in M4 and currently proceeds as planned. All tasks are active and following the established timeline. At the moment, no delays and deviations from plan have been reported.
WP4 started at M07. WP4 focuses on the AI-enabled computing systems and algorithms used for the end-to-end infrastructure of each of all the innovations streams. To this end, WP4 map the goals of SHAPEFUTURE into engineering requirements, to meet the KPIs of each innovation. Furthermore, WP4 will identify, propose and develop AI-enabled solutions for advanced vehicle operations.