The work carried out during the reporting period has been concentrated on the following activities:
Task 1.1 User involvement.
Since January 2015 BrainSigns has carried out a series of colloquia and in-depth interviews with eminent personalities as well as important keyplayers in the aeronautic domain.
Many of them have been contacted during professional and scientific meetings in the transport domain as well in ad-hoc meetings. A list of these contacts follows:
Transport and avionics
1) Thales, Italy
2) Alenia Aermacchi, Finmeccanica, Italy
3) Augusta Westland, United Kingdom,
4) Piaggio Aerospace, Italy
Air Traffic Control Schools
5) ENAC, Tolosa, France,
6) ENAV, Academy Forly, Italy,
7) NATS, United Kingdom,
Aerospace and aeronautic space centers
8) the Aeronautic and Aerospace University of Zheijang, China,
9) the Centre for the Civil Aviation, Tjianin, and Chengdu, China
10) the Centro Italiano di Ricerca Aerospaziale (CIRA), Italy
Airplanes and Helicopters Simulators
11) the CAE simulator company, Canada
Experienced instructors of airlines and Air Traffic Controllers schools
12) various experienced airlines pilot trainers (Alitalia and Easyjet)
13) experienced trainer for air traffic controllers in Italy and France
Experts in HR area in aeronautic sector
Task 1.2 Innovation Strategy Development.
After having concluded such rounds of interviews with all these experts in the aeronautic sectors, it appeared clear that there is a general strong interest for the methodology at the base of BWR in the area of Human Resource (HR) in aeronautics.
Task 1.3 Market study.
Because of the ATCO’s interest, there are possibilities of enlarging the market initially considered for the BWR device. In particular, a couple of positive markets whose size is interesting for the use of BWR have been determined as the flight schools and the schools of Air Traffic Controllers (ATCos).
Task 1.4 Risk assessment.
A series of structured interviews have been performed by BrainSigns to relevant actors in the aeronautic domain as indicated in the Task Users Involvement. From these interviews a series of risks connected to the evaluation and acceptance of the BWR device have been identified. Appropriate countermeasures have been derived to cope with these risks for the device to be developed.
Task 1.5 Production costs evaluation
The market opportunities we have shown are really interesting but progressive development activities in the BWR production are necessary and also in developing sales and support units. BWR will firstly require a substantial investment to develop the device and tune the system in the 3 different markets that have been considered whilst carrying out site testing. Following this production systems and collaborations will have to be put in place including the development of sales and support teams. For the development of the device in a market ready tested version 2 years of time and ca. 800.000 Euros is estimated as being necessary.
Task 1.6 Intellectual Property (IP) management.
As recommended, the scenario in IP has been investigated in two directions: the first was relative to the freedom to operate for the realization of the BWR device and the second was relative to the protection of the intellectual property of it. Both actions have been successfully developed and two patents from BrainSigns related to the core principles of the BWR device have been filed to the proper offices to protect the IP of the project.
Task 1.7 Partners search and consolidation of existing partnership
After the experts interviews, as described above, it became clear that BrainSigns needs to search for the help of other expertise as partners or suppliers in order to develop the whole project. The required partnership for the testing and diffusion of the BWR device has been determined and negotiations are under way to generate a viable Consortium Agreement before the submission to the SMEINST-2 phase of the project.
Task 1.8 BrainWorkladReader Business Plan
As a result of the tasks carried out in the feasibility study, we have defined a business plan which concentrates on the following points:
Business Model
Market strategy
Product partnership and sales strategy
Value Proposition and product presentation
Financial Plan
