Deadline: 23-Sep-21
European Commission is inviting proposals for Artificial Intelligence for sustainable, agile manufacturing (AI, Data and Robotics – Made in Europe Partnerships).
This topic focuses on manufacturing and process industries, addressing the entire lifecycle of products and services from design to remanufacturing and including all the aspects primarily relevant for industrial production.
The objective is to exploit the potential of AI as a transformation tool to support circular production in the entire manufacturing and process industry, with due consideration for standardisation activities when relevant. AI will be a strategic instrument to improve sustainability, agility and resilience to external and internal influences, taking account of the European Green Deal objectives. AI applications will be capable of optimising their actions based on limited human input, thanks to context awareness and information sensed from the physical environment, and will have the long useful lifetime typical of industrial environments.
Projects have to address the need for AI tool sets with simplified interfaces requiring only easy to acquire skills, and adapted to manufacturing environments without highly skilled personnel. Methods and tools will be provided to make AI solutions usable also for lower volume production and shorter time series, guaranteeing the quality of results even while using reduced resources for the training of AI algorithms. Generative approaches could be considered to help designing products and processes improving the sustainability of industrial solutions.
The topic will integrate new or existing technologies to make them practically and economically viable in the industrial world; this should be demonstrated through at least two realistic use cases with demonstrable economic return.
Funding Information
The check will normally be done for the coordinator if the requested grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:
- public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
- cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (lowvalue grant).
Expected Outcomes
Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:
- Establishing European industry as leader in sustainable manufacturing and process industries through the application of trustworthy AI technologies;
- Improving the environmental sustainability of industrial production;
- Improving the agility of European industry and its resiliency to external and internal influences;
- Integrating state-of-the-art AI technologies with advanced circular manufacturing and re-manufacturing technologies and systems, exploiting their potential across the entire product and service lifecycle.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions;
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States ;
- eligible non-EU countries:
- countries associated to Horizon Europe;
- low- and middle-income countries .
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