EuRoC Project – Advances in Stage I

In order to provide an environment for exploration and innovation in the European manufacturing industry, whilst motivating the teams to a healthy competition, the EuRoC Project was launched.

In 2014 there were four distinct calls in the EuRoC project. Each call was addressing a different target group (Challengers, End User, Technology Developers and System Integrators). There were several campaigns as instruments for promoting the program and the call announcements. There were also two EuRoC Info Days with presentations and Q&A sessions. The EuRoc Core Consortium sent out numerous e-mails to potentially interested parties. As a result, 103 challenge applications, 77 use cases, 20 technologies and 12 system integrators from 22 different countries have been received.

In Stage I, registered challengers were asked to undergo a simulation contest where they had to solve certain qualifying tasks referring to their particular challenges. To support the participants during the simulation contest, mailing lists and support forums, to post and answer technical questions about the simulation environment in general have been formed. At the end of the simulation contest, the participants had to submit their work to the challenge host by sending their Challenger VM version. Only 41 challengers were allowed to advance viaproposal submission for Stage II.

For this the challengers had to team up with end users and submit a proposal outlining how they are going to tackle the end users’ use case. They were allowed to invite technology developers and system integrators to join their proposal, if they felt an added-value is provided by the additional participants.

To facilitate this match-making, EuRoC organized a Brokerage Workshop in London Gatwick, 16-17. December 2014. It was attended by over 150 attendees. 36 proposals resulted from that Brokerage workshop that are currently being evaluated by independent expert. Only 15 proposals will be funded in Stage II of EuRoC.

In conclusion it can be said that Stage I has become an outstanding success in the project. All project objectives for this stage were fully achieved and the project activities are running perfectly on scheme.