Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RICAIP (Research and Innovation Centre on Advanced Industrial Production) Reporting period: 2017-09-01 to 2018-08-31 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project The Research and Innovation Centre on Advanced Industrial Production (RICAIP) is a H2020 Teaming project based on a consortium of four founding members (CVUT-CIIRC, BUT-CEITEC, DFKI and ZeMA) that aims to jointly establish the independent Centre of Excellence for Industry 4.0 relevant areas.There is an evident demand of the Czech industry for more open and diverse environment that would enable wider access to the global market. RICAIP will answer such call by the establishment of a new Center of Excellence enabling cooperation of academia and industry within the very first distributed testbed based on open-access principles, which will be accessible for strategic EU industries and excellent researchers worldwide. The RICAIP Centre addresses current needs, gaps and demands of the industrial sector by enabling cutting edge research solutions in Industry 4.0. The project’s ambition is to establish the RICAIP Centre as the independent international hub for Industry 4.0 which will bring new, smart, safe, and sophisticated solutions to distributed (multi-site) industrial production of the future. The four founding partners of the RICAIP Centre will jointly build up a unique, virtually connected, experimental facility (the RICAIP Testbed) that would enable excellent research and cooperation of academia and industry in the field of cyber-physical systems, artificial intelligence, production systems, and other relevant topics of Industry 4.0 Initiatives. The RICAIP Testbed will be based on the current experimental facilities of the partnering organizations in Prague, Brno and Saarbrücken, that need to be upgraded to enable their interconnection and joint operation. The long-term objectives of the RICAIP Centre will be implemented by a virtual “joint venture” of the RICAIP Project partners, at the Czech side benefiting from established infrastructure and organizational set up of interdisciplinary university research institutes (both CVUT-CIIRC and BUT-CEITEC).The RICAIP Centre mission is to define the future of the Czech strategic industry and to contribute to the European manufacturing potential. By creating unique open access research capabilities on a multinational / European level, the RICAIP Centre enhances the ecosystems of value chains of major EU industries, providing comprehensive support for Industry 4.0 & beyond to the community of SMEs, using a geographically distributed experimental Testbed (RICAIP Testbed) as an industrial relevant environment for open ideas and innovations. The newly established RICAIP Centre will promote and enhance current research excellence in artificial intelligence, advanced production systems, and smart infrastructure management. Surprisingly, no R&D infrastructure of pan-European interest has been established yet to foster this strategic sector of economy. Missing European research infrastructure and open core facility for advanced industrial production is a clear handicap in developing the concept of Industry 4.0 and promoting industrial competitiveness towards modern, clean, and fair economy. The RICAIP Centre vision therefore allies with an open distributed EU R&D Infrastructure on advanced industrial production as a sustainable and efficient EU Testbed Core addressing new challenges of the industrial production and production development, “assuring maximum return on investment in terms of science, knowledge, innovation, training, socio economic benefits, and competitiveness” and promoting the ecosystem of trust for strategic EU industries (such as automotive and aircraft). The RICAIP Centre aims to enter national Roadmaps of Research Infrastructures with a long-term ambition of transforming the RICAIP Centre to an ERIC legal entity. . Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far The goal of the RICAIP Phase I project was to prepare the comprehensive Business Plan for the new RICAIP Centre, as the Centre of Excellence for Industry 4.0 esp. for multi-site industrial production andmulti-site production system development, that aims to change the industrial research in a more interdisciplinary way, bringing excellence and new solutions to the sector. The work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the implementation phase was distributed among six work packages with specific tasks, deliverables and milestones. All the work done led up to the preparation of proposal for ESIF/OP RDE national complementary funding for the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and the Final Business Plan, both necessary for the application to the RICAIP Phase II call. 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 RICAIP Centre evolves the paradigm of industrial production. It offers to develop and build the first geographically distributed physical testbed (RICAIP Testbed), where Czech and German partners will act as starting nodes of the unique and open European core facility, enabling to solve the new R&D&I challenges of the advanced fully integrated multi-site industrial production. The RICAIP Centre is Industry 4.0 catalyst for the Czech Republic and Europe as a whole. The RICAIP Centre has an ambition and potential to build an international research and innovation hub for Industry 4.0 and to become a trustful partner within the European research infrastructure. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to continue to expand existing key partnerships and to build new ones in a close interaction with the globalization process of Industry 4.0.The RICAIP Centre aims to address the challenges of industrial production and also to take advantage of the social implications of Industry 4.0. The fourth industrial revolution, as the current expected driver of industrial and societal change, unlocks new opportunities for growth in qualification, flexibility, and innovativeness of people, thus opening the possibilities for several groups to participate in the workforce in a brand-new way and quality. All human activity, both business and social life, has been significantly changed by the Internet. From this fact stems the necessity of adjusting the educational programmes at individual schools. Multidisciplinarity is one of the key aspects in advance of Industry 4.0 currently there are not many members of research and innovation teams that are lacking technical background. Therefore, the recruitment strategy at Industry 4.0 institutions and the RICAIP Centre will be targeted not only to personnel who possess technical/science knowledge, but it has to consider other professionals as well. This is a clear window of opportunity for experts from nontechnical domains. Guided tour - Zema and DFKI Testbed, Saarbrucken Workshop on Human-Robot Collaboration at ZeMA, Saarbrucken RICAIP Testbed Day at CIIRC CTU, Prague RICAIP meeting at CEITEC BUT, Brno Guided tour - CEITEC BUT facility, Brno RICAIP dissemination - rollup RICAIP partners at the Kick-Off Meeting
