RECIRCULATE addresses the needs of European recycling sector by overcoming current challenges relating to automated dismantling and sorting; safe logistics; fast, cost-effective and reliable State of Health and State of Safety characterization. Combining these advances with a blockchain-based platform, that will combine the data collected during dismantling and recycling and the battery provenance, will enable a unique battery passport and virtual marketplace for e-mobility, consumer and stationary Battery Energy Storage Systems. This approach will enable the RECIRCULATE consortium to create a cascade approach that will enable increased end-of-life battery repair, reuse, remanufacture and recycling. The advances in RECIRCULATE will based on best-in-world innovations, including: • Automated dismantling based on Artificial Intelligence with accurate sorting by SoX and battery provenance for recycling. • Fast, cost-effective, reliable SoX characterization; Safe storage and transportation based on smart logistics solutions. • Blockchain-based Battery Passports that tracks key battery data, and enables both a complete circular system for e-mobility batteries and a unique, blockchain-based virtual marketplace. The unique virtual marketplace will allow for the creation of new circular business models for repair, reuse, remanufacture and recycling of second-life batteries, minimizing cost, time, energy and environmental impact whilst maximizing battery value. RECIRCULATE represents a pan-European consortium of world leading organisations that are looking to commercialize these technologies of European origin. The coordinator, Centria, is leading activities in battery dismantling. The consortium is strengthened by very large organisations, including: Ford, who are currently undertaking development for e-mobility, and DHL a global leader in logistics and reverse logistics as well as European SMEs with world leading technologies.

Agricultural robotics solutions can integrate a variety of robots for a variety of monitoring and targeted intervention tasks, to increase farm productivity, efficiency and sustainability through support of automated precision farming operations. Despite the rising farmer investment in farm/agricultural robots, most deployable robotic systems are meant to automate only specific tasks. The wide variety of tasks that need to be fulfilled in a single precision agriculture operation or mission makes it extremely unprofitable to address its automation with task-specific robots. These challenges result in a lack of flexibility of current heterogeneous multi-robot systems that poses low returns on investment and high risks for farmers. In order to become cost-effective, heterogeneous multi-robot systems needs to become more flexible by employing more versatile (e.g. multi-task) robots which collaborate to accomplish complex missions; ensuring scalable human oversight and intervention through adaptive mission control mechanisms (e.g. without information overload /overwhelming effort from the farmer); allowing the farmer to profit from robotics operational data. FlexiGroBots proposes a Platform for developing heterogeneous multi-robot systems and applications which allows for i) more versatility by using the same robots for different observation and intervention tasks, in different missions, throughout the crop life cycle, ii) more cooperation between heterogeneous (ground and aerial) robots to accomplish more complex missions; iii) more valuable data to generate accurate insights into the fields, crops and robotics operations by combining data from IoT sensors, satellites and data collected by the robots; iv) more autonomy for real-time adaptation of mission plans as well as robot behaviour at the crop level, given operational conditions and real-time insights; v) more precision to carry out specific tasks in a very localized way, gaining accuracy and lowering costs.

Food security is a global challenge and is impacted by, rapidly compounding effects including climate change, supply chains, human labour shortages, driving the need for traceability, and technological innovation and automation to name a few. The latest important price increases of agricultural row products show the limitations of the available resources. Through this Joint Undertaking, the AGRARSENSE consortium of 57 partners (including 4 affiliates) plan to take agricultural technology and productivity to the next level, beyond the State-of-the-Art, by combining some of the most advanced organisational capabilities from across European industrial 16 Large Enterprises, 25 SMEs and 16 Research & Technology Organisations (RTOs), from 15 countries. The development of the most advanced sensory and autonomous agricultural capabilities requires a sophisticated governance structure, ensuring that all partners are aligned across Use Cases and Work Package deliveries. The AGRARSENSE consortium has one of the world’s leaders in Forestry automation, Komatsu, as Project Coordinator. The AGRARSENSE project goal of creating a holistic ecosystem of sensory and automated capabilities will further extend Europe’s lead in optimizing and securing agricultural value chains. To drive such an ambitious impact agenda, we have selected seven Use Cases which will, collectively, contribute to solving the challenges outlined. These Use Cases are Greenhouses (UC1), Vertical Farming (UC2), Precision Viticulture (UC3), Agri robotics (UC4), Autoforest (UC5), Organic Soils & Fertilizers (UC6) and Water (UC7). These Use Cases are fused together by the most advanced hardware, software and system integration technologies, which will drive new solutions for partners and the collective AGRARSENSE impacts at scale.

Farming is facing many economic challenges in terms of productivity and cost-effectiveness, as well as an increasing labour shortage partly due to depopulation of rural areas. Furthermore, reliable detection, accurate identification and proper quantification of pathogens and other factors affecting both plant and animal health, are critical to be kept under control in order to reduce economic expenditures, trade disruptions and even human health risks. AFarCloud will provide a distributed platform for autonomous farming that will allow the integration and cooperation of agriculture Cyber Physical Systems in real-time in order to increase efficiency, productivity, animal health, food quality and reduce farm labour costs. This platform will be integrated with farm management software and will support monitoring and decision-making solutions based on big data and real time data mining techniques. The AFarCloud project also aims to make farming robots accessible to more users by enabling farming vehicles to work in a cooperative mesh, thus opening up new applications and ensuring re-usability, as heterogeneous standard vehicles can combine their capabilities in order to lift farmer revenue and reduce labour costs. The achievements from AFarCloud will be demonstrated in 3 holistic demonstrators (Finland, Spain and Italy), including cropping and livestock management scenarios and 8 local demonstrators (Latvia, Sweden, Spain and Czech Republic) in order to test specific functionalities and validate project results in relevant environments located in different European regions. AFarCloud outcomes will strengthen partners’ market position boosting their innovation capacity and addressing industrial needs both at EU and international levels. The consortium represents the whole ICT-based farming solutions’ value chain, including all key actors needed for the development, demonstration and future market uptake of the precision farming framework targeted in the project.