Traditional manufacturing systems lack the necessary flexibility and reconfigurability that can allow short production cycles and fast deployment of the updated system. Although the use of automation technologies based on industrial robots can increase the adaptability of a production line, the desired flexibility cannot be achieved until abilities for genuine collaboration of the robots with the human workers are developed. CoLLaboratE will revolutionize the way industrial robots learn to cooperate with human workers for performing new manufacturing tasks, with a special focus on the challenging area of assembly operations. The envisioned system for collaborative assembly will be capable of allocating human and robotic resources for executing the production plan sharing the tasks according to the capabilities of the available actors. The CoLLaboratE project will build upon state-of-the-art methods for teaching the robot assembly tasks using human demonstration, extending them to facilitate genuine human-robot collaboration. To this end, a framework for equipping the robots and AGV mobile platforms with basic collaboration skills, such as load sharing, human touch recognition and human intention detection, will also be developed, coupled with deep reinforcement learning algorithms for increasing adaptability. Special attention will be paid to providing effective safety strategies allowing the use of a fenceless approach within the production cell. As a result, closer collaboration will be achievable and efficient production plans making optimal use of the available resources will be designed and executed. The proposed solution will be evaluated in four different pilot sites, which will be implemented as collaborative factory floors of the industrial partners in Italy, Slovenia, Turkey, and Romania.

L4MS (Logistics For Manufacturing SMEs) will spark incremental (productivity increase of new users by a factor of 4 and system setup time reduction by a factor of 10) and disruptive innovation (batch size one & consumerization) for over 100,000 European Manufacturing SMEs & Mid-Caps, building on their intra-factory logistics challenge (50% of the production cost of an item) unleashing their digitalization potential by powering new robot systems that are more cost effective at lower lot sizes. L4MS relies upon: • An open industrial IoT platform with enablers for rapid and efficient deployment of customized logistics solutions. • A suite of "Smartization services" including business modelling, technical support, mentoring, access to skills and to finance. • The L4MS Marketplace, a one-stop-shop, where European Manufacturing SMEs & Mid-Caps will access the L4MS services. • A portfolio of 23 cross-border Application Experiments by 50 SMEs selected through 2 competitive Open Calls, that will test more than 40 services & apps leveraging 10M€ of public funding across 12 established and emerging Digital Innovation Hubs. • A growing ecosystem that will foster Smart Specialization in each single region linked to L4MS. L4MS will transform a pan-European ecosystem into a self-sustainable start-up operating an Open Platform for Innovations in Logistics (OPIL) and L4MS marketplace consisting of 21 members. Comprising 6 Competence Centres, 5 technology providers, 4 industry associations, 3 end-users and 3 business developers -currently engaged in I4MS (XS2I4MS, HORSE and BEinCPPS) and FIWARE- plus 6 Satellites Nodes. L4MS covers 14 EU countries, 15 regions with 8 of them from East Europe. L4MS will help demonstrate that public funded research with a “Smartization” approach (accelerating Industry 4.0) can help manufacturing SMEs & Mid-Caps achieve digital excellence and global competitiveness through logistics automation become “entrepreneurial states and digital industries”.

During the last decades, supply chains have become huge networks of heterogeneous organisations involved in the manufacturing and delivery of products to end users. The appearance of IoT is transforming every sector subject to be digitalized. After a period of evaluation of the use of IoT, companies are now moving to complete digitalization of their supply chains. Under this paradigm, iNGENIOUS (Next-GENeration IoT sOlutions for the Universal Supply chain) will exploit some of the most innovative and emerging technologies in line with the standardised trend, contributing to the Next-Generation IoT (NG-IoT) and proposing technical and business enablers to build a complete platform for supply chain management. iNGENIOUS embraces the 5G Infrastructure Association (5G IA) and Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation (AIOTI) vision for empowering smart manufacturing and smart mobility verticals. The iNGENIOUS network layer brings new smart 5G-based IoT functi¬onalities, federated Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) nodes and smart orchestration, needed for enabling the projected real-time capable use cases of the supply chain. Security and data management are fully recognized as important features in the project. iNGENIOUS will create a holistic security architecture for next-generation IoT built on neuromorphic sensors with security governed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms and tile-based hardware architectures based on security by design and isolation by default. In the application layer, iNGENIOUS new AI mechanisms will allow more precise predictions than conventional systems. Project outcomes will be validated into 4 large-scale Proof of Concept demonstration, covering 1 factory, 2 ports, and 1 ship, encompassing 6 uses cases. iNGENIOUS is formed by 21 partners from eight countries, including three telecom vendors and manufacturers, two network operators, four logistics partners, two universities, three research institutes and seven high-tech SMEs.

The success of 5G technologies depends closely on their ability to attract vertical stakeholders, seeking the move of their services from cloud to the edge to meet unique KPIs. 5G-INDUCE project is based on the belief that such attractiveness requires vertical stakeholders and Network Application (nApp) developers to be able to smoothly deploy and manage applications in distributed 5G network environments, in a secure fashion and with strict KPI requirements. 5G-INDUCE relies on the deployment of an open ETSI NFV compatible 5G orchestration platform for the deployment of advanced 5G nApps. The platform’s unique features provide the capability to the nApp developers to define and modify the application requirements while the underlay intelligent OSS can expose the network capabilities to the end users on the application level without revealing any infrastructure related information. This process enables an application-oriented network management and optimization approach that is in line with the operator’s role as manager of its own facilities, while it offers the operational environment to any developers and service providers through which tailored made applications can be designed and deployed, for the benefit of vertical industries and without any indirect dependency through a cloud provider. The project focuses on the Industry 4.0 vertical sector, as one of the fastest growing and most impactful sectors in European economy with high potentials for service development SMEs and with the capability to tackle all diverse cases of service requirements. The platform is integrated over 3 5G Experimentation Facilities in Spain, Greece, and Italy, and extended with links towards specific Industries, for the showcasing of nApps in real 5G environment. The consortium includes all the required stakeholders (MNOs, Industries, System integrators and SMEs) from the benefited business sectors evaluated in the project, while significant part of the work (>50%) is conducted by innovative SMEs.

We are at the “eve” of a fundamental transition in 5G, and the aspiration of 5G-EVE is to create the foundations for a pervasive roll-out of end-to-end 5G networks in Europe. 5G-EVE supports this fundamental transition by offering to vertical industries and to all 5GPPP Phase3 projects facilities to validate their network KPIs and their services. Important representatives of these vertical industries are directly involved as partners of 5G-EVE exactly to influence the design of the end-to-end 5G services, and to provide an early assessment. The 5G-EVE end-to-end facility consists of the interconnection of four 5G-site-facilities (France, Spain, Italy, Greece), which have been selected because of their considerable previous work with vertical industries and standardisation bodies, on top of their 5G technology competences. 5G-EVE aims at creating synergies between a significant number of facilities that will ensure sustainability and impact in terms of exploitation. The 5G-EVE facility will enable experiments with: (a) heterogeneous access, including NR, licensed/unlicensed spectrum, advanced spectrum management; (b) Mobile Edge Computing, backhaul, core/service technologies; (c) means for site-interworking and multi-site/domain/technology slicing/orchestration. 5G-EVE will be initially compliant with 3GPP Rel. 15 and, later on, with Rel. 16. Industrial verticals will be facilitated in the specification/analysis of experiments through: (a) intent-based, and other high-level, interfaces; (b) means for advanced 5G testing, i.e., for KPI analysis, technology benchmarking, performance diagnosis. A VNF pool, including open source and proprietary, radio/network/service, components will be developed and made available. 5G-EVE will impact standards, and has the potential and strategy for ensuring the sustainability of the facility beyond the project lifetime, therefore becoming a cornerstone of the 5G PPP programme and beyond.