SYNERGIES WITH SISTER PROJECTS IN THE SAME CALL TWIN-TRANSITION-01-04
One core ambition of European Union is to enhance the impact and effectiveness of its funding programs by promoting collaboration and mutual learning between projects and stakeholders of similar calls, leveraging each one's strengths and resources to achieve common goals. SMARTHANDLE embraces this ambition and emphasizes the importance of establishing synergies and clusters with partners of various backgrounds (academia and industry) to facilitate technology transfer, training and skill development. SMARTHANDLE has agreed upon common activities with the three projects of same European call:
MASTERLY - (Nimble Artificial Intelligence driven robotic solutions for efficient and self-determined handling and assembly operations),
HARTU - Handling with AI-enhanced Robotic Technologies for flexible manufacturing),
AGILEHAND - Smart Grading, Handling and Packaging Solutions for Soft and Deformable Products in Agile and Reconfigurable Lines
The 4 sister projects have already agreed on several ways of collaboration:
1. dissemination activities: conferences and workshops, common newsletters and media posts, white paper at the end of projects, starting off with the interactive ERF2023 workshop on the feasibility of agile manufacturing for SMEs in March.
2. technical collaboration: benchmarking opportunities, shared datasets, common ‘taxonomy’ to characterize and define the parts, exchange information in soft/deformable/delicate part manipulation, multi-robot applications, mobile manipulators, new gripper concepts, system architectures, standardization efforts, collaboration in similar applications,
3. others: external Advisory Boards, regular meetings to share experiences.
The project also seeks to join forces with various clusters of other EU funded projects, like the Hybrid Production System (HPS) cluster, as well as establish links with EIT Manufacturing network to ensure the extension of the project's exploitation roadmap. Active participation in forums such as European Robotics Forum (ERF) and European Factories of the Future Research Association (EFFRA) is already being promoted, to fortify the deployment strategy of developing technologies in years to come. Strongly relating with EU guidelines, SMARTHANDLE consortium aims to bring about a balanced representation of all genders in the project team and in project management roles. To this end, the consortium seeks to create synergies with various organizations, such as the European Platform of Women Scientists (EPWS), EU Association for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (Witec), Women TechEU.