Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ESMERA (European SMEs Robotics Applications)
Berichtszeitraum: 2020-09-01 bis 2022-02-28
ESMEERA acknowledges theopportunity to mobilize robotics SMEs and assist them in overcoming the infamous “Valley-of-Death”, which “traps” key enabling technology products and services from being transferred into the marketplace.
The project focuses on EU SMEs that are oriented towards the development of novel technologies and are in need of both technical and business support to accelerate the transfer of their ideas to market.
ESMERA aims to support SMEs in the realisation, testing and promotion of robotic technologies through:
• Providing industrial challenges defined by key EU companies, stimulating SMEs to compete by developing and promoting new technologies to address real life problems that already have a market.
• Engaging a number of competence centres that can provide an easily accessible environment for developing, evaluating, testing, and demonstrating novel robotic technologies.
• Offering direct financial support through a cascade funding mechanism to supplement the technical excellence offered by the competence centres, allowing prototype/product creation and promotion
• Offering mentoring and support in developing business cases and managing the complete chain from “idea to market product” by EU champions in robotics that have successfully undergone the process
• Involving industrial associations and networks that can directly promote the developed solutions to their members, addressing a wide range of industrial sectors and applications
The project focuses on EU SMEs that are oriented towards the development of novel technologies and are in need of both technical and business support to accelerate the transfer of their ideas to market.
ESMERA aims to support SMEs in the realisation, testing and promotion of robotic technologies through:
• Providing industrial challenges defined by key EU companies, stimulating SMEs to compete by developing and promoting new technologies to address real life problems that already have a market.
• Engaging a number of competence centres that can provide an easily accessible environment for developing, evaluating, testing, and demonstrating novel robotic technologies.
• Offering direct financial support through a cascade funding mechanism to supplement the technical excellence offered by the competence centres, allowing prototype/product creation and promotion
• Offering mentoring and support in developing business cases and managing the complete chain from “idea to market product” by EU champions in robotics that have successfully undergone the process
• Involving industrial associations and networks that can directly promote the developed solutions to their members, addressing a wide range of industrial sectors and applications
In its duration ESMERA has covered a wide range of activities which can be classified under the following objectives
Objective 1: Industrial driven challenges for robotics developers
To ensure that all project outcomes have a commercially viable route to market and to inspire SMEs in focusing their development efforts ESMERA introduced the notion of Challenges. The consortium ensured the interest of key EU players in several sectors, to define a problem that the experiments had to solve by developing/enhancing their robotic solutions. Each of the challenges represent a completely different operating environment where the proposed robotic solutions will have to prove their capabilities.
Achievement: ESMERA has successfully defined 62 challenges out of which 24 were answered by its open calls.
Objective 2: ESMERA Competence Centres (CCs)
Competence Centres are at the heart of the innovation process and are the first stage of linking robotics SMEs. CCs assist SMEs to conduct the research experiments and provide access to innovative technology. The CCs provide support both in the proof of concept and the industrialization/ commercialization phases.
Achievement: All 4 Competence Centers have successfully joined the DIH networks and established links for growth. In ESMERA they devised methods to deliver training and technical services to SMEs to apply AI and robotic solutions for the needs of Industry.
Objective 3: Robotics Application Oriented Research Experiments
The project’s ambition was to implement at least thirty-two innovative Research Experiments in cognitive robotics with European SMEs. All experiments are Application Oriented as they are driven by challenges. Objective 3 is the main ESMERA technological and scientific objective. Calls for proposals had to be organised to stimulate innovative applications ideas while CCs and Facilitators having active links with industrial associations and SME consortia had to proactively identify applications that can benefit the most from robotics created by EU companies.
Achievement: ESMERA has successfully funded 32 application experiments and supported them in developing novel robotics technologies. A scalable service offering by the ESMERA CCs have helped SMEs to showcase AI and robotics solutions in industry driven challenges.
Objective 4: “Idea to product” support and mentoring
The fourth objective of ESMERA project is focused on promoting the experiments results to the market. ESMERA Facilitators (BOR, RUR, COMAU) bring the perspective and expertise of both robotics SMEs and a large robotics company to the tasks. Objective 4 is the main business objective. During Phase 1 facilitators had to focus on helping the SMEs identify the aspects of the challenge that are relevant to the target market environment and assisting in maximising the impact of the Proof of concept. During Phase 2 the Facilitation moves towards helping to the development of effective exploitation plans for the technology.
Achievement: ESMERA has successfully mentored 32 experiments in the proof concept phase and 16 of them in the industrialization and commercialization phase
The main outcomes of the core ESMERA consortium revolve around the knowledge gained through the process of defining Challenges, setting up Open Calls, Funding and Supporting Experiments through the Competence Centers and providing guidance for exploitation through the Facilitators.
The scientific and technological results were generated by the 32 funded experiments, which involved 59 participants (39 SMEs) and allocated 4.4Meuro to support them.
Deatails on the robotic technologies that have been generated by each of the application experiments can be found on the project website: https://esmera-project.eu/explore/
Objective 1: Industrial driven challenges for robotics developers
To ensure that all project outcomes have a commercially viable route to market and to inspire SMEs in focusing their development efforts ESMERA introduced the notion of Challenges. The consortium ensured the interest of key EU players in several sectors, to define a problem that the experiments had to solve by developing/enhancing their robotic solutions. Each of the challenges represent a completely different operating environment where the proposed robotic solutions will have to prove their capabilities.
Achievement: ESMERA has successfully defined 62 challenges out of which 24 were answered by its open calls.
Objective 2: ESMERA Competence Centres (CCs)
Competence Centres are at the heart of the innovation process and are the first stage of linking robotics SMEs. CCs assist SMEs to conduct the research experiments and provide access to innovative technology. The CCs provide support both in the proof of concept and the industrialization/ commercialization phases.
Achievement: All 4 Competence Centers have successfully joined the DIH networks and established links for growth. In ESMERA they devised methods to deliver training and technical services to SMEs to apply AI and robotic solutions for the needs of Industry.
Objective 3: Robotics Application Oriented Research Experiments
The project’s ambition was to implement at least thirty-two innovative Research Experiments in cognitive robotics with European SMEs. All experiments are Application Oriented as they are driven by challenges. Objective 3 is the main ESMERA technological and scientific objective. Calls for proposals had to be organised to stimulate innovative applications ideas while CCs and Facilitators having active links with industrial associations and SME consortia had to proactively identify applications that can benefit the most from robotics created by EU companies.
Achievement: ESMERA has successfully funded 32 application experiments and supported them in developing novel robotics technologies. A scalable service offering by the ESMERA CCs have helped SMEs to showcase AI and robotics solutions in industry driven challenges.
Objective 4: “Idea to product” support and mentoring
The fourth objective of ESMERA project is focused on promoting the experiments results to the market. ESMERA Facilitators (BOR, RUR, COMAU) bring the perspective and expertise of both robotics SMEs and a large robotics company to the tasks. Objective 4 is the main business objective. During Phase 1 facilitators had to focus on helping the SMEs identify the aspects of the challenge that are relevant to the target market environment and assisting in maximising the impact of the Proof of concept. During Phase 2 the Facilitation moves towards helping to the development of effective exploitation plans for the technology.
Achievement: ESMERA has successfully mentored 32 experiments in the proof concept phase and 16 of them in the industrialization and commercialization phase
The main outcomes of the core ESMERA consortium revolve around the knowledge gained through the process of defining Challenges, setting up Open Calls, Funding and Supporting Experiments through the Competence Centers and providing guidance for exploitation through the Facilitators.
The scientific and technological results were generated by the 32 funded experiments, which involved 59 participants (39 SMEs) and allocated 4.4Meuro to support them.
Deatails on the robotic technologies that have been generated by each of the application experiments can be found on the project website: https://esmera-project.eu/explore/
The main areas that ESMERA aspires to advance the EU robotics sector are:
• Technology Excellence:
o Carrying out 32 research experiments demonstrating the proof of concept for new robotic technologies.
o Multi sectorial challenges requiring step changes in robotics in multiple areas: Perception, Actuation, Manipulation, Mobility, Cognitive ability, Safety, Decisional Autonomy etc.
o Availability of state-of-the-art equipment, infrastructure and technical expertise by the CCs.
• Organizational Excellence
o Agile industry development and engineering by development, deployment, promotion of new robotic technologies
o Supporting SMEs in all stages:
- Technology development by CCs
- Business development by facilitators
o Market promotion mentoring by facilitators and communication specialists
• Business Excellence
o Contributing to overall growth of SMEs targeting new robotics markets
o Challenges coming from robot resistant sectors, opening new markets for robotics
o Extra funding and business mentoring for challenge winners–Active promotion to market
• Technology Excellence:
o Carrying out 32 research experiments demonstrating the proof of concept for new robotic technologies.
o Multi sectorial challenges requiring step changes in robotics in multiple areas: Perception, Actuation, Manipulation, Mobility, Cognitive ability, Safety, Decisional Autonomy etc.
o Availability of state-of-the-art equipment, infrastructure and technical expertise by the CCs.
• Organizational Excellence
o Agile industry development and engineering by development, deployment, promotion of new robotic technologies
o Supporting SMEs in all stages:
- Technology development by CCs
- Business development by facilitators
o Market promotion mentoring by facilitators and communication specialists
• Business Excellence
o Contributing to overall growth of SMEs targeting new robotics markets
o Challenges coming from robot resistant sectors, opening new markets for robotics
o Extra funding and business mentoring for challenge winners–Active promotion to market